Stretching the topic slightly -- so as to include other high-school coincidences -- Nobel laureate Richard Axel has a delightful passage in his 2004 acceptance speech (medicine & physiology), recalling a moment in the 1960s when he was playing competitive basketball as the center for Stuyvesant High's team in New York City.
Their opponent one afternoon was Power Memorial High, which had the future Kareem Abdul Jabbar (then known as Lew Alcindor) playing center. As Axel recalls: "When I was first passed the ball, he put his hands in front of my face, looked at me and asked: "What are you going to do, Einstein?"
Quoting from Axel: "I did rather little. He scored 54 points and I scored two.
He went on to be among the greatest basketball legends and I became a neurobiologist."
Their opponent one afternoon was Power Memorial High, which had the future Kareem Abdul Jabbar (then known as Lew Alcindor) playing center. As Axel recalls: "When I was first passed the ball, he put his hands in front of my face, looked at me and asked: "What are you going to do, Einstein?"
Quoting from Axel: "I did rather little. He scored 54 points and I scored two. He went on to be among the greatest basketball legends and I became a neurobiologist."