I think the key to your answer is in the parent's text: "This showed dedication and interest as well as some measure of intelligence." My reasoning is that if

I think the key to your answer is in the parent's text: "This showed dedication and interest as well as some measure of intelligence." My reasoning is that if someone is very good in his line of work, some of that work starts to spill out to the public, either by research, teaching, articles, blog posts, etc.. If a person is not a pure introvert, working all by himself, and is quite good, invariably someone will notice it..