On the subject of motivation and self-learning, the story of an Indian clerk and math genius named Srinivas Ramanujan stands out . Here's an anecdote I read on the BBC website: Ramanujan was recovering from his first bout of serious illness in a nursing home in Putney and Hardy had gone there by taxi to visit him.

"Hardy (never much of a conversationalist) greeted the sick man abruptly with the words: "The number of the taxi-cab that brought me here was 1729. It seemed to me rather a dull number."

To which Ramanujan replied without hesitation: "Not at all, Hardy! It is a very interesting number. It is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways."

1729 can indeed be represented as 1³ + 12³ and as 9³ + 10³, and is the lowest integer for which such a combination is possible."

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7144874.stm