Mathematical Mysteries - The Beauty and Magic of Numbers

I vividly remember a class on numerical analysis taught by J Professor Chamberlain at the University of Utah during the 1960s. He would become so enthralled with his lecture that, while hurriedly writing equations on the blackboard, he would fail to notice how closely he was stepping to the edge of the platform, raised six inches off the floor. My attention fluctuated between following his lecture and watching his feet move ever nearer to the platform's edge. Suddenly and without warning, he would step off the platform and fall in a great tumble to the floor.
The entire class would burst out laughing. Chamberlain would give a great laugh as he picked himself off the floor and brushed the dust from his pants. Smiling, he would offer some delightful joke and then return to the blackboard and his equations. We were so awed by his complete involvement in the realms of numerical analysis that we, too, paid intense attention to his lectures trying to discover what he saw in the subject matter. By the end of the year, we had fallen a little more in love with numbers.