[jtsylve]

  “A student asked, ‘Yeah, but do the wrinkles always form in the same way?’ And I thought: I haven’t the foggiest clue!” said German, a faculty member at the Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science’s Department of Biomedical Engineering. “So it led to this research to find out.”

I wish the authors would have mentioned the kid by name in the acknowledgement section of the paper. I bet the kid would have felt very proud and inspired to having their name published in a scientific journal.

[Qem]

That makes me wonder how many important results actually came from inquiries from curious students whose name was forgotten or purposefully ommited, lost from history. Any other similar examples? Student from Student's t-distribution was actually an engineer that had to adopt a pseudonym because of his employer, so I think it doesn't count.