Two to much too coincidental

So, I had two math classes today on two totally unrelated fields/topics with two very different teachers, who within 20 minutes of each other randomly went off onto their own storytelling tangent and completely coincidentally told exactly the same story.

The story was interesting, but so was the fact that Math professors must not have too many interesting stories to tell. They're plagerizing each other's best stuff.

So the story goes, that this kid (true story) is some kind of amazing genius, but gets himself into a social situation so he has to be in a duel. He knows he's going to lose, so he spends all night writing down all of his genius Math stuff, gives it to his friend to give to Gauss, who he thinks might be smart enough to understand it. Then he dies the next day in his early twenties. The stuff he wrote down is an entire field of Mathematics (ha ha - Field theory.) And he's one of the most famous dudes in Math. (He wrote down a bunch of other stuff, apparently that gets him noted, at least today, in more than one discipline as a father of the stuff.

Someone in my class cracked that by using his last night to record his discoveries, he studied for the wrong exam.

Speaking of exams, can you hear the deep sigh of momentary relief?