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Did you ever figure this out? I read the story too, but can't remember the details or find it on the internet and now it's bugging me.
Sanddancer-
I think that you and @DFP are probably thinking of Srinivasa Ramanujan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan
Probably one of the most famous stories about him involves the number 1729 - Ramanujan was often sick as a child and as an adult, and he came to the UK having impressed the various academics here. At one stage he was in hospital here and G. H. Hardy went to visit him in a cab with the number 1729. He told Ramanujan the cab number and hoped that it wouldn't be a bad omen as it was quite a boring number, to which Ramanujan said, "no, it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways."
An extraordinary mathematical mind.
bothwell
I have a question that perhaps one of you history buffs can help me with.
I basically have a vague memory of something that I need reminding the details of. Ok, so I remember hearing a story about some boy savant type (who was also a emperor/prince etc) somewhere in the east... someplace like India or China many hundreds of years ago. It was a place which did not have knowledge of a modern mathematical system. But some vistor from another country gifted him a mathematics book. And a short time later, not only had this boy developed a full understanding of the modern mathematics of the era but also come up with a whole bunch of innovations.
That is all I remember, and it maybe nonsense. But if anyone knows of a vaguely similar story in history, link me.
Thanks.