Earlier quoted context omitted.
There were a lot of Ashkenazi Jews in Hungary. There have been some studies suggesting that they're the group with the highest average IQ, likely due to cultural reasons (being outsiders, dual-language, etc...). Most of those Jews left because of of the Nazis, and many emigrated to the United States. There, they were given opportunities they never had at a home. Combine that with the urge to "make something" of their…
Re recent - random sampling, but let's call tribute to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Lov%C3%A1sz for getting the Abel prize.
"There's another person with the same name!" someone told me once. And indeed, one state over, there was a professor with the same name at a University.
I happened to get a consulting job for a few weeks at that University, so I knocked on his door. Just to see the reaction on his face, I didn't speak a word, I simply plopped down my drivers license on his desk.
He stood up, pointed at me accusingly and shouted "YOU!"
That was... not exactly the reaction I was expecting, to say the least.
It turns out that he had been frustrated to no end for months and months by some poor student that contacted him from China. This student kept insisting that the professor was the only one that could help him with a very specific mathematics problem.
The professor told him, yes, but I'm not a theoretical mathematician, I'm a computational mathematician.
The student replied "Yes, I know!" It's some computational mathematics code that you published that I'm interested in.
The professor told him that yes, he's published code in computational mathematics, but it can't be him.
The student replied: "But lattices are your speciality! It has your name on it! You're the only professor to specialise in this field in the whole country, and you're the only one with this name to work at any University!"
... and so on, and so forth...
I was the one who published the code! The only other Hungarian in the country with the same name just so happened to be interested in the exact same obscure computational mathematical theory!
I had an interest in "reverse calculators" that could determine which symbolic forms could produce some long decimal value as an input. The LLL algorithm was one such method, and I wrote an implementation and published it online.
So I should have known about László Lovász, because I wrote an implementation of the algorithm he co-invented!
Sometimes it seems that it's a very small world...