You might know that a googol—the digit 1 followed by 100 zeroes—is a very large number indeed. You might even know that a googolplex—a 1 followed by a googol of zeros—is an even bigger number. But ...

Mathematician Edward Kasner, 59, of Columbia University, is one of the mythical baker’s dozen of savants who were supposed to be the only men in the world able to understand the Einstein theory of ...