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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
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.