It is amazing that this happened in the modern day. Paraphrasing the article: Driven by a desire to be powerful and respected, and buoyed up by Stalinist ideas

It is amazing that this happened in the modern day. Paraphrasing the article: Driven by a desire to be powerful and respected, and buoyed up by Stalinist ideas about gaining prestige through scientific acumen, Elena turned to the field of chemistry. Mircea Corcioveci, one of the top scientists at the Institute, eventually discovered that Elena "didn't know what a chromatograph was and didn't recognize the formula for sulfuric acid," which was "taught to first-year chemistry students." Nevertheless, on December 8, 1967, she obtained a PhD in chemistry after defending her thesis on the "Stereospecific Polymerization of Isoprene on the Stabilization of Synthetic Rubbers on Copolymerization." Romanian law decreed that doctoral candidates had to publicly defend their theses. To avoid the public defense of a thesis that she likely did not write, the law was changed so that she only needed to submit a written defense. Ultimately, she became Chair of the National Council for Science and Technology and controlled all scientific research in the country, although she knew nothing about it. "We were told: no paper can be written or published, no conference delivered without Elena Ceausecu's name appearing in first place...We were producing papers with words which, we knew, she could not pronounce, let alone understand." She was not even very bright—in fact, almost illiterate—but, through devious and fraudulent means, she managed to become one of the most lauded chemists in the mid-twentieth century.