Answer:
"He is a man of good birth and excellent education, endowed by Nature with a phenomenal mathematical faculty. At the age of twenty-one he wrote a treatise upon the Binomial Theorem, which has had a European vogue. On the strength of it, he won the Mathematical Chair at one of our smaller Universities, and had, to all appearance, a most brilliant career before him." -- Sherlock Holmes in 'The Final Problem'
"Is he not the celebrated author of The Dynamics of an Asteroid - a book which ascends to such rarefied heights of pure mathematics that it is said that there was no man in the scientific press capable of criticizing it?" -- Sherlock Holmes in 'The Valley of Fear'
Though Watson says that Moriarty is unknown to the public.