At the age of two, while accompanying her mother to the supermarket, she had worked out in her head whether a ten-ounce can at 19c was cheaper than a one-pound-twelve-ounce can at 79c. At three, she startled her father by observing that, unlike other numbers, zero meant different things in different positions. By eight, she had mastered algebra and geometry; by ten, she had taught herself calculus; she entered M.I.T. at thirteen and proceeded to make a series of brilliant discoveries in abstract mathematics, culminating in a treatise, “Topological Prediction in n-Space,” which was useful for
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