Schramm's doctorate was in the mathematical field of topology, but the most extraordinary thing about him was that in other fields of mathematics he was self-taught. He was not, for example, trained in stochastic calculus, but, as a colleague observed, "he knew it all, not by reading books, but just by himself". Frequently – and this was not restricted to probability theory – he would look up references for the first time in order to give an appropriate credit in a paper he was writing, after he had worked out the proof for himself.