Never heard of him, but that is pretty amazing! On some level, it makes sense, though... we lived in Kenya when I was a kid, and I remember watching the men at a building site across the street put something like a small pillow and then a board on their head, and then scamper about scaffolding with a seemingly impossible load of clay bricks stacked up there...

Niches definitely matter. I've made a substantial part of my living over the past few decades as a trader in rare old postage stamps — which is not THAT unusual — but I have "made mine" as one of the world's foremost experts on a very small and narrow area within this already esoteric field.