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Comment by derrida | Hacker News Reader

As did Wittgenstein http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein who was an engineering drop out and wrote the Tractatus whilst a WW1 PoW in Italy, only to be given a PhD as an afterthought by Russell. I have known of an academic in a teaching and research position at a major university who did not complete high-school & was hired based on the merit of their published papers.

These are of course the very small minority to the general rule.

There are also cases of it working the other-way: PhDs that have made a lifelong contribution to their field without an academic post. Paul Erdős comes to mind... the most prolific mathematician of all time (by number of published papers) was a vagabond. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erdos

(Interesting fact: both Wittgenstein and Erdős were disciples of the thought of Frank P. Ramsey: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_P._Ramsey I am finding it hard to discover which degrees, if any, he had.)

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And not just any PhD, a Cambridge PhD, using said Tractatus as the dissertation. Astonishing.

At that time the Ph.D. was something new in European universities; it was basically imported from the US.

Many professors didn't welcome the novelty, including one of Wittgenstein's examiners, who wrote in his report:

"The Tractatus is a work of genius, but it otherwise satisfies the requirements for a Ph.D."

EDIT: I should have said "British" instead of "European", see comments below.

You have things the wrong way round. The Ph.D. degree originated in Germany.

You are right, but it came to UK through US:

  From the United States, the Ph.D. degree spread to 
  Canada in 1900, and then to the United Kingdom in 1917.

(from Wikipedia)

Maybe the name Ph. D., but the Ph. D. itself is older in the USA and in Europe. There were Ph. D. in the 19th century both in Europe and in Universities like Yale or Harvard.

Could you clarify? Humboldt University started granting PhDs in the early 19th century, Yale in 1861, so yes, of course there were PhDs in the 19th century.

At the time, the PhD was not seen very highly in the department, and in the report on the defence of the PhD Moore famously said:

"It is my personal opinion that Mr. Wittgenstein’s thesis is a work of genius; but, be that as it may, it is certainly well up to the standard required for the Cambridge degree of Doctor of Philosophy’

So, it was not seen as an achievement at all!

So, it was not seen as an achievement at all!

I don't get that interpretation from that quote at all. To me, the quote is about contrasting the speaker's subjective view with a more objective "standard" requirement for a PhD degree. It's basically saying: "To me, his work as that of a genius. But YMMV. However, even if you don't want to go quite that far, you'll certainly admit that it's great and fulfills the requirements for a PhD."

Not being the work of a genius does not necessarily mean that it's not an achievement.

I think it's more along the lines of: the degree itself is a insignificant and unworthy of his work. It's like giving him a Kindergarten gold star sticker. Which says something about the quality of his work, or of other degree holders, or both.

Disagree. The quote reflects this observation:

Just because the thesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus) exceeds the requirements for the degree, does not make the degree insignificant.

Even after the Tractatus was published, Wittgenstein was still teaching secondary school in Austria (though this was of his own choice). He didn't even take a position at Cambridge until 1929 (eight years after the Tractatus was published).

At the outbreak of the World War, Wittgenstein left Cambridge to serve as a soldier in the enemy's army. Attitudes were different in the late 1920's than in the immediate wake of the war.

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