> A professor I had in college, whose first published result was from a piece of homework he turned in where he incidentally solved an open question about bound on a problem, had a curious habit.

A related anecdote is about George Dantzig (perhaps best known for the simplex algorithm):

> During his study in 1939, Dantzig solved two unproven statistical theorems due to a misunderstanding. Near the beginning of a class, Professor Spława-Neyman wrote two problems on the blackboard. Dantzig arrived late and assumed that they were a homework assignment. According to Dantzig, they "seemed to be a little harder than usual", but a few days later he handed in completed solutions for both problems, still believing that they were an assignment that was overdue. Six weeks later, an excited Spława-Neyman eagerly told him that the "homework" problems he had solved were two of the most famous unsolved problems in statistics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Dantzig#Education