Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently shared a photo of a letter he received from a Stanford lecturer who could have been his professor if he hadn’t put his graduate studies on “permanent postponement.”
The letter, dated June 14, mentions research work that Mr. Musk would have been working on had he not dropped out of college. “Nice letter from Bill Nix, who would have been my professor at Stanford if I hadn’t put my graduate research on (permanent) deferral,” the SpaceX chief wrote in the caption.
Take a look below:
Nice letter from Bill Nix, who would have been my professor at Stanford if I hadn’t put graduation research on (permanent) postponement pic.twitter.com/ioq0mGwN7K
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 19, 2022
The letter’s introductory paragraph revealed that William D. Nix, a professor of engineering in the Department of Material Science and Engineering at Stanford University, responded to Mr. Musk’s recent interview.
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It read: “In a recent interview titled: Elon Musk on the Early Days of Tesla: Interview Part 1, which was posted on YouTube, you said you met me at Stanford in 1995 as your future professor if you enrolled in a graduate program at Stanford”.
In the letter, the professor also praised Mr. Musk for his “description of the problems of using Si for lithium battery anodes.” He said, “About 10 years ago at Stanford we researched the problems you described. It did seem like you had read all our papers.”
Since it was shared, the post has racked up more than 137,000 likes. It has prompted people to share various comments. Mr. Musk also responded to his own post, joking that the letter shows his PO box number and he may need to change it. “You may need a new mailbox after tweeting this,” he wrote in the following tweet.
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“Imagine continuing your studies instead of developing companies. You could be a professor and there would be no Tesla, SpaceX or even PayPal. What a weird timeline it would have been,” wrote one user. “This is so cool,” added another.
A third said, “It doesn’t matter, you’ve accomplished a lot more by going your own way than that letter would have brought you. I respect your achievements. You’ve risen higher than the Eagles,” while others simply pointed to the likely unintentional deception of disclosing the PO box number.