George Dantzig thought he was finishing his homework, only to learn he had solved an impossible math problem!

In Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon's character, a janitor, solves a thought-to-be-impossible math problem while cleaning a classroom building at Harvard. While not quite so far-fetched, George Dantzig did something similar.

Dantzig showed up to class late while earning his doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley. The class was being taught by Jerzy Neyman. Neyman had put up a supposedly impossible to solve math problem on the board.

Having arrived late, Dantzig thought the problem was homework. So he went home and did it.

By doing so, he created the simplex algorithm, an algorithm for solving linear programming problems.

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