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One day, the mathematics teacher at Town High School, the English-language high school in Kumbakonam, an Indian town, explained that the result of dividing any number by itself was always one. To do so, he used real-life examples, involving fruits and vegetables. Divide three bananas among three people, he said, and each person will get one. At one point, a boy of just 12 years old stood up and asked: "But is zero divided by zero also equal to one? Even if no fruit is divided between anyone, will each person get one?". The entire class burst out laughing. In reality, it was not the inappropriate joke of the bully on duty. That boy had posed a question that had tormented mathematicians for centuries: giving meaning to an operation that seemed to escape all understanding. A question that would lead to the birth of infinitesimal calculus. That boy's name was Srinivasa Ramanujan.