Carpet cleaner from Altadena, California who was erroneously contacted early one morning in October 1987 by an official with the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, who informed him that he had won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry; the 38-year-old had been mistaken for Donald J. Cram, 68, the actual winner, who also lived in Southern California. Presuming that the call was a prank, he hung up, but they called again a half hour later and insisted that he had won the Nobel Prize. As he coincidentally also had a degree in chemistry, he asked for which of his accomplishments he was being honored, and soon realized that the detailed, technical explanation was not part of a practical joke; he then informed the caller of their mistake. In addition, it was not the first time he had been mistaken for the real winner - as an undergraduate at USC, he had routinely received mail intended for his namesake, a professor at UCLA, and helpfully forwarded it, once jokingly advising the professor that the town wasn't big enough for both of them. The night after the Nobel error, he was a guest on
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962), where he good-naturedly recounted the confusion; the two later finally met at a joint photo session for People magazine.