Yasantha Rajakarunanayake became the toast of the internet this week after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos called him smarter than himself. Surprised by the compliment, Yasantha, now a U.S.-based scientist, recalls his time as Bezos’ classmate at Princeton University in the 1980s.
During a talk at The Economic Club of Washington, a non-profit organization that discusses significant issues of the day, Bezos described Yasantha as the “smartest guy at Princeton.” The Amazon CEO recounted how Yasantha’s mathematical prowess influenced his decision to abandon his dream of becoming a theoretical physicist. This revelation, made on September 13th, quickly went viral, prompting netizens to seek out the Sri Lankan who inadvertently helped reshape global commerce.
In an interview with ThePrint, Yasantha recounted the surge of emails following Bezos’ speech, initially suspecting his LinkedIn had been hacked due to the influx of messages.
“I think Jeff had done the interview on 13 September, and by 15th, I was getting spam in my LinkedIn inbox,” Yasantha said. “Several people were asking me, ‘Are you Jeff Bezos’ Yasantha.’ I thought someone had hacked my LinkedIn and was quite worried. They had misspelled my name as well.”
By September 18th, Yasantha, 55, had seen the video and acknowledged it in a tweet. “To hear him mention me by name, and include anecdotes about me on national (US) television as his Sri Lankan friend… It was a pleasant surprise,” he told ThePrint. “It is not every day that the world’s richest guy calls you the smartest person he ever met at Princeton. I am thankful.”
Yasantha and Bezos were at Princeton from 1982 to 1985, sharing some academic interests. Bezos animatedly recounted an incident from their university days when he and a roommate were stumped by a math problem. Both aspiring theoretical physicists at the time, they turned to Yasantha for help. Bezos described how Yasantha, after briefly contemplating the problem, provided the solution.
Taken aback by the promptness, Bezos asked, “Did you just do that in your head?” Yasantha responded that he had encountered a similar problem three years prior and mapped the new problem onto the old one, making the answer immediately apparent. “That was an important moment for me,” Bezos said, “because that was the very moment I realized I was never going to be a great theoretical physicist.”
While Yasantha doesn’t recall the incident as vividly as Bezos does, he acknowledges its occurrence around 1984. “It was a pivotal moment for him to decide to give up his initial dream of becoming a theoretical physicist,” Yasantha told ThePrint. “I don’t recall the incidents as vividly as he does, but it is quite true.”
Despite losing touch after 1985, the two clearly share mutual admiration. “Jeff was an excellent student and a very persistent, tenacious one,” Yasantha said. He reminisced about a time when students dared each other to complete a computer science assignment in a single line of code. “Finally, I gave up and did this in 10 or so lines of code,” he recalled. “But I remember Jeff working through all night, in pursuit of the most compact solution, and turned in a two-line solution that was probably the shortest anyone could do…”
Yasantha’s story not only highlights his brilliance but also underscores the determination and tenacity that define Jeff Bezos. Their brief academic interaction at Princeton set Bezos on a path away from theoretical physics, ultimately leading to the creation of Amazon, which revolutionized global shopping.
