During a math course at Columbia University, a student fell asleep in class and was awakened by the chatter of his classmates. When class ended, he saw that the teacher had written two problems on the whiteboard. He assumed they were homework, so he wrote them down in his notebook to solve later. When he first tried to solve the problems, they seemed quite difficult. But he didn’t give up—after spending hours in the library, gathering references, and studying, he finally managed to solve one problem, even though it was challenging.
Surprisingly, the teacher didn’t mention the homework in the next class. Curious, the student stood up and asked, “Sir, why didn’t you mention the assignment from last lecture?” The teacher replied, “Assignment? It wasn’t mandatory. I was just giving examples of math problems that science and scientists haven’t yet found a solution to.” The student was surprised and said, “But I wrote and submitted the solution to one of them in four papers!” Later, his solution was officially recognized in his name and registered at Columbia University. The four papers of that problem are still on display at Columbia University. The student’s name was George Dantzig, and the problem was taken from the Math Stack Exchange.
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