I remember that. IIRC, the draw of the "surfer dude" wasn't just that he was a surfer, but that he lived out of his van, was a mathematician or physicist, and basically just traveled around surfing and doing theoretical math when he wasn't surfing. It's fairly easy for a lot of people to romanticize that.

I don't recall whether I read about him, or watched a Ted talk, or both, but a good portion of the time when I read "unified theory" some recollection of that story comes back. I'm sure it helped that a very dumbed down version could be understood almost purely through visual aids with pretty colors and symmetry. ;)