George Dantzig

You know the famous scene in "Good Will Hunting" that triggers the whole movie? Even if you have not seen the film, you know the scene.

The supposedly-simple janitor who sees an incredibly difficult math problem written on the blackboard and then... solves it! Oh, he is not that simple after all! How do you like them apples! (Wait, we're mixing our scenes.)

Now, supposedly the scene was based on Matt Damon's brother writing fake equations on MIT's blackboards. But there is a real-life precedent to Will Hunting: George Dantzig, a Jewish mathematician whose contributions ran the gamut from economics to engineering to statistics to computer science. His most important innovation is probably an algorithm that is used to solve linear programming problems.

When Dantzig was studying in Berkeley, he arrived late for class and saw two problems written on the blackboard. Assuming they were homework, Dantzig solved them, claiming that they "seemed to be a little harder than usual". As it turned out, they were not an assignment; the professor was showing the class two of the most famous unsolved problems in statistics.

How do you like them apples!