I suspect that the guy got his degree, but we never checked it out. We figured that he must have done something else to get the degree and just needed to publish something that they could bind in a book form because the university required every master's degree to produce a thesis that looks like a book. Instead of doing something serious, he did the pictures and published them. He did the suck up quotes as a reward for his professor allowing him to do a master's degree program that didn't require writing a real thesis. We all imagined class after class of students having to listen to this guy's lectures interspersed with little bits of his self-absorbed quotes.
You captured it very well with the "serious in a ridiculous way" description. It's a nice quote, but it becomes ridiculous if a pompous professor inflicts it on a class full of students too many times.
Bill, when you posted earlier that you had "one of your kids out", I thought, "Oh, Bill has kids. I didn't know that."
...then, of course, I realized you were talking about one of your snakes--;)