Once upon a time, a man by the name of George Danzig was late to class. Upon arrival he noted down the two mathematical problems that were up on the blackboard, thinking they were homework and solved them. Those two problems were actually examples of famously unsolved statistic problems and this man just casually solved them. He did however mention that the homework seemed to be slightly harder than usual.
"A year later, when I began to worry about a thesis topic, Neyman just shrugged and told me to wrap the two problems in a binder and he would accept them as my thesis."