Many years ago I read an interview with a physics professor, where he recounted a funny situation when he was a graduate student at Harvard.
When a first year, he was supposed to take the quantum mechanics course, but he could not stand the lecture and begged to be able to defer it for a year, hoping he'd get a better lecturer next year, and somehow he got his request approved. This left him with an open slot, however, so he, not knowing much about quantum mechanics, ended up taking a quantum field theory course, because he had heard that the lecturer, Julian Schwinger, was very good.
When the time came for oral exams, each student chose the topic they would be interviewed on. The student chose electromagnetism, but most of the others chose quantum mechanics, so when due to some mix-up the examiners began asking him questions on quantum mechanics, and he answered them using his knowledge from taking quantum field theory. Eventually the examiners realized their mistake, asked him to write Maxwell's equations in differential form, which he did, and then passed him and encouraged him to go into theory.
For the life of me, I cannot remember who this physics professor was. I do remember that he mentioned that Wendall Furry was one of his examiners though.
This is basically my desperate hope that someone out there has read that interview too and can dig it up again.