Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently shared a picture of a letter he received from a Stanford lecturer, who could have been his professor if he hadn't put his graduation studies on "permanent deferment".

The letter, which dates back to 14 June, mentions a research work that Mr Musk might have worked on had he not dropped out of the university. "Nice letter from Bill Nix, who would've been my prof at Stanford if I hadn't put grad studies on (permanent) deferment," the SpaceX chief wrote in the caption.

Take a look below:

The introductory paragraph of the letter revealed that William D. Nix, professor of engineering at the department of Material Science and Engineering at Stanford University, was responding to Mr Musk's recent interview.

It read, "In a recent interview entitled: Elon Musk on the Early Days of Tesla: Interview Part 1, which was posted on YouTube, you mentioned meeting me at Stanford in 1995 as your prospective professor if you had enrolled in graduate program at Stanford".

In the letter, the professor also praised Mr Musk for his "description of the issues of using Si for anodes for lithium batteries". He said, "About 10 years ago we at Stanford did research on the very issues you described. Indeed, it almost seemed like you had read all our papers."

Since being shared, the post has garnered more than 137,000 likes. It has prompted people to share various comments. Mr Musk also replied to his own post and joked how the letter is showing his PO Box number and that he may have to change it. "Might need a new PO Box after tweeting this," he wrote in the following tweet.

"Imagine you continued your studies instead of developing companies. You might be a professor and there would be no Tesla, SpaceX, or even PayPal. What a weird timeline it would have been," wrote one user. "This is so cool," added another.

A third said, "It doesn't matter, you have achieved far more by taking your own road than that letter would have taken you. I respect your accomplishments. You have soared higher than the Eagles," while others simply pointed out the probably unintentional goof-up of disclosing the PO box number.