#Bhaskaracharya

“In 1150 a mathematician in the Deccan finished the greatest treatise of medieval Indian science and pitched its arithmetic to a "fawn-eyed" student — and in 1657 Fermat, knowing nothing of him, set Europe's best minds a challenge problem India had solved, to ten digits, five centuries before.”

“The hardest mathematics of its age can be taught as affection. He solved equations Europe would not crack for another five hundred years, brought infinity and the near-derivative into arithmetic — and wrote it all as verse addressed to a bright girl named Līlāvatī, in problems about bees, pearls and peacocks.”