First, he gained that skill just for this task specifically.

It's not some unique, hard-to-acquire skill. It's rare because nobody needs it anymore.

The value of that professor is, and was, his mathematical ability.

Second, he fed transcription into Claude. The work that Claude did wasn't deciphering the shorthand.

The works aren't accessible not because of the shorthand. It's because the mathematics of Godel's work is hard.

The ability of the LLM to hold a large context, connect the pieces, and synthesize output is not a human ability, as the professor himself said.