My favorite story in a related genre: I was a scholarship student at university, funded by a wealthy couple. Also at university I had someone who, over three classes taken together, had graduated from "rubs me the wrong way" to "nemesis." It turns out that he was also there on the same scholarship.
The university organized a dinner every year to introduce scholarship students to their patrons. It was at the Ritz-Carlton and I remember feeling very, very underdressed. Anyhow, it turned out that our 90-something patron was simultaneously sponsoring about two-dozen scholarship students, so rather than doing much talking I sipped a coke and just listened to the dinner table conversation.
Nemesis, in his oh-so-charming way, began bragging about a civil engineering project that he had been on ("As a sophomore -- really not something many people do, you realize") remodeling an overpass near the school. He was going into lots of irrelevant detail -- specs, etc. Our patron made the requisite politely interested noises and, at one point, suggested that a particular implementation detail might be improved upon. I recall it being something like the amount of reinforced concrete required.
Nemesis: "I don't know how things were when you were still working, old-timer, but I'm absolutely positive that blah blah blah.
90-something guy: "Oh, I guess it is possible that they've improved the formula since..."
Nemesis: "Since when anyhow?
90-something guy: "Since I invented reinforced concrete."
The gentleman passed away a few years ago and, sure enough, that was quite prominent in his obituary.
I seem to have totally hijacked this, so what's the harm with another Nemesis story:
We took CS201 (discrete math) together. One test was exactly one problem long and scheduled for a 90 minute class period. The core insight was that it decomposed into "Take the product of all f(N) together for N = 1 through N = 25", where f(N) was something looking vaguely algebra 2-y. Hand calculation looked like it would take, oh, north of an hour.
On inspection of f(N), I noticed that it contained the term "(BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH) * (.5N - 11) / (BLAH BLAH BLAH)". This obvious makes f(22) 0, thus making simplifying the expression or calculating f(1..21) and f(23..25) then multiplying rather moot.
Now, our professor was not a very tricksy guy, so I figured "Hah, betcha didn't see f(22) coming now did you" was not exactly his style, so I went back to check my assumptions. But they were, unquestionably, right.
So I went up approximately 4 minutes into the exam and said "Umm, sir, I'm done." He looked surprised. I said "If you're surprised, then I think there's a bug in the problem." He said I had probably made an arithmetic mistake and I would hate to lose all credit for the test.
Back to seat. Checked setup of expression. Nope, sorry, it was absolutely mathematically unavoidable that (.5N - 11) was in there.
So I went back to the prof, now 5:15 into the 90 minute long test, and said "Sir, I really think I'm right here. I'll take the zero if I botched this -- can you take a look for me right now?" So he looks it over for 20 seconds, smiles, says "That is what I get for having grad students write my exams" (this quote is literally accurate), and takes my exam.
I had a friend in the class with whom I was going to go to a study group after the test was over. Not having anything else to do, I waited for him.
Twenty minutes later, Nemesis exits the class -- "first" to finish the test, naturally. Without prompting, he says "Don't feel bad, not everyone can hack discrete math. No reason to waste time on the exam if you're not going to get the right answer." "Ahh, out of idle curiosity, what did you get?" "It's complicated but..." biggest smile of my college career
It's probably not word-for-word literally accurate, given that it is my ~10 year old recollection of a conversation and as an Irish storyteller I generally don't let facts get in the way of a Narrative. That said, this guy was routinely obnoxious enough to drive me to hatred just with classroom comments.
My guess was that the invention is not an invention as such, but more along the lines of "he made it practical in a huge way and showed everyone else following him how to do it". There is often a very long lag between actual "first to invent" and "figured out how to make it practical without it being stupidly expensive", and oftentimes the latter is regrettably (IMHO) not recognized nearly as much as the inventor. A quick bit of Googling around led me to Tung-Yen_Lin [1], and prestressed concrete, a relatively (as these things go in civil engineering) modern technique.
Patio11's comment that this was roughly 10 years ago almost fits when this rather amazing gentleman passed away.
No, not him, and not interested in playing 20 questions.
Look, we all know HNers are smart enough to Google up the particulars. That would put me in the awkward position of having published a private conversation by a deceased gentleman who generously paid for several dozen poor students to go to college, including me. I'd appreciate if you just wrote this one off to "I trust Patrick not to have invented this story out of whole cloth" and let it lie.
That would put me in the awkward position of having published a private conversation by a deceased gentleman who generously paid for several dozen poor students to go to college, including me.
It's not like you told us he secretly punched babies to steal their toys. It was a charming anecdote. It makes him look like a great person with a sense of humor. If anything, the story is entirely flattering. This is not the stuff secrets are made of.
Sorry, wasn't trying to trace the actual name. I knew Monier's name from some documentary I watched and was confused if it was you to met him or were you sharing someone else's century old anecdote.
I think the comment was supposed to point out that Monier is supposed to be one of the principle inventors of reinforced concrete and that he passed away in 1906 ... hence trying to figure out how the gentleman in the story fit in.
What formula? It is concrete reinforced with rebar. My guess is the OP just misremembered the specific thing the patron invented. It's a great story either way.
Might just be misremembering the specific retort he made - he is famous for use of reinforced concrete. (I checked that after the last time I told the story, to make sure I hadn't invented that part.)
When you're not humble enough, bad things happen. When you're too humble, good things that would have happened don't happen. That makes it harder to regret being too humble, because you usually don't know about the things that could have happened.
I always struggle to figure out when I'm crossing the line from being humble to self-deprecating (the latter not always being a good thing and something I've regretted on occasion).
One single job interview where they ended up hiring the guy with nearly identical qualifications. The guy leading the interview later told me on the phone "it was almost 50/50, but we had to pick only one of you", and the reason was that the other person appeared slightly more confident in his abilities using a particular framework. If I'd have been a bit more self-promoting, that could've been me. Lesson learned, of course.
Of course there's a difference between confidence and being brash.
Wow, I can't believe that a student had the gall to talk like that to his sponsor. The admissions process usually weeds out those types of students, but a few bad apples can always get through.
The annual WUSTL Engineering Scholarship Dinners were always very pleasant in my experience. If anything, the students were overly polite and felt a little intimidated in their sponsors' presence. We certainly felt intimidated by the formal atmosphere at the dinner.
You see "not intimidated by authority"; I see "asinine". Part of the point, actually, was that "nemesis" didn't know that the fellow was an authority on the topic. Maybe if he had, he would have been intimidated. ;)
Did I imply otherwise? That said, I think socially ungraceful people should have access to higher education, too, and we'd be a much poorer world if they hadn't had so in the past.
Especially (but not just) because social grace strikes me as a arbitrary and moving point on an arbitrary and moving scale.
The university organized a dinner every year to introduce scholarship students to their patrons. It was at the Ritz-Carlton and I remember feeling very, very underdressed. Anyhow, it turned out that our 90-something patron was simultaneously sponsoring about two-dozen scholarship students, so rather than doing much talking I sipped a coke and just listened to the dinner table conversation.
Nemesis, in his oh-so-charming way, began bragging about a civil engineering project that he had been on ("As a sophomore -- really not something many people do, you realize") remodeling an overpass near the school. He was going into lots of irrelevant detail -- specs, etc. Our patron made the requisite politely interested noises and, at one point, suggested that a particular implementation detail might be improved upon. I recall it being something like the amount of reinforced concrete required.
Nemesis: "I don't know how things were when you were still working, old-timer, but I'm absolutely positive that blah blah blah.
90-something guy: "Oh, I guess it is possible that they've improved the formula since..."
Nemesis: "Since when anyhow?
90-something guy: "Since I invented reinforced concrete."
The gentleman passed away a few years ago and, sure enough, that was quite prominent in his obituary.