A thin boy, who Lennon later discovered was a math prodigy from Iceland who’d bagged his first PhD in number theory at just sixteen,
oh no. Not the dreaded literary trope of the multiple PhDs. This is a line that hits differently for people with academic backgrounds, who know that multiple PhDs is a sign of dilettantism, not achievement. Normally schools won't let you get a second PhD unless something went very wrong. You should be doing a postdoc instead.
