I have a theory that the reason our distant ancestors moved on to the land in the first place was that we saw what else was in the sea and said to ourselves "Nope, none of that, I'm getting out".

Kicking off an entire new branch of physics with a small paper before you've even done your PhD is probably even more of an overachievement than doing it with a small PhD, to be fair :)

Lovely though that would be, it doesn't appear to be quite true- I _think_ this is his thesis and it's a bit longer. theses.hal.science/tel-00006807...
Maybe his "Waves & Quanta" note (www.nature.com/articles/112...) is being confused with his thesis here? (Don't have access to check though)

That's a good bit of Friday afternoon listening for my team and the Automation lot at work- ta!