Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov was born in 1903 in the Russian city of Tamblov. In 1920 Kolmogorov studied at Moscow State University, but not initially mathematics. Instead, Kolmogorov tried his hand at history. He looked at the question of whether taxes in Russia in the Middle Ages were collected at the house level or at the village level. He analyzed tax data and showed that that data had a much simpler description if taxes were collected at the village level. He presented these results to the history faculty, to great applause. Asking them whether he could publish such a paper, he was told, “You only have one proof. You cannot publish in a history journal without at least two proofs of your hypothesis.” And so Kolmogorov left history for a field where one proof suffices. Kolmogorov would go on to become the greatest Russian mathematician, if not the greatest mathematician anywhere, of the twentieth century, making fundamental contributions to nearly all areas of mathematics.

Lance Fortnow, The Golden Ticket: P, NP, and the Search for the Impossible