Straight up my alley. As a teenager I wanted to become a mathematician or a physicist before I "settled" as an engineer. Love reading about these discoveries.

This is my favorite part of the whole article:

After just a week or two, he was able to prove that, at least some of the time, this process would yield ellipsoids that were large enough to set a new record.

He immediately informed Weiss of his result. "Let's meet next week and I'll tell you what my mistake was," Klartag told his mentor.

The almost automatic disbelief of an extremely self-beneficial result + the drive to pursue the truth even if it ends in disappointment — you love to see it and we don't that often in contemporary America.