Mine is lying in my pram on a hot summer’s day in the garden of a house in the country. I was given a piece of bread and butter to eat – but the butter had turned rancid in the heat. I clearly remember thinking I don’t like the taste of this.
All perfectly ordinary stuff. But then you come across people like Freeman Dyson who says:
My strong suit was always mathematics. I was not driven to become a scientist by a craving to understand the mysteries of nature. I just enjoyed calculating and fell in love with numbers. I remember vividly one episode from early childhood. I do not know how old I was. I know only that I was young enough to be put down for an afternoon nap in my crib. The crib had mahogany sidepieces so that I couldn’t climb out. I didn’t feel like sleeping, so I spent the time calculating.I added one plus a half plus a quarter plus an eighth plus a sixteenth and so on, and I discovered that if you go on adding like this forever you end up with two. Then I tried adding one plus a third plus a ninth and so on, and discovered that if you go on adding like this forever you end up with one and a half. Then I tried one plus a quarter and so on, and ended up with one and a third. I had discovered infinite series. I don’t think I talked about this. It was just a game.
That’s scary…
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