Born on 15th September 1909, in Kanchipuram Conjeevaram Natarajan Annadurai was an Indian politician commonly referred to as Perarignar Anna, or Arignar Anna by the Tamil speaking community. The fifth and last Chief Minister of Madras and the first Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu was C. N. Annadurai.
Annadurai was famous for his excellence in oratorical skills, he had also mastered the languages of English and Tamil and was also known for his presence of mind. He was a multi-faceted personality as he was a politician, short story writer, diplomat, erudite, and so on.
Let’s narrate a story from his life although it doesn’t include much about mathematics. I’m writing about this interesting information because it shows how skillful Annadurai was and also it includes ‘numbers’ in it and it is very interesting.
During the years of 1960s, Annadurai was on a foreign tour, and in the year 1968, he went to the University of Yale, USA. Annaduari gave a speech at the university and he was also requested to speak to the students.
While the interactive session was going with the students, and “guys were allowed to ask the puzzle type of questions that could test one’s English proficiency.”
Interesting Mathematical story : Why is 6174 the Magic Number
One of the students stood up in the hall and asked Annadurai a question “ Can you say a hundred words in English which don’t contain the letters A, B, C, or D?” Annadurai, being a professional in English, immediately started to answer by saying words one after another.
He said “they are starting from one, two, three, four, up to ninety-nine and stopping (1, 2, 3, 4 up to 99) everyone was surprised who was present in the hall and were waiting for the 100th word. If Annadurai had said ‘hundred’ (100) he would have failed but he didn’t he stopped after ‘ninety-nine (99). The hall was filled with a huge round applause for Annadurai.
Interesting Mathematical story : The most exceptional number that is divisible all the digits from 1 to 10
Annadurai was asked one more question by a native speaker in English he said “can you build a sentence in English by using ‘because’ three times in it?” Instantly C. N. Annadurai responded by saying: “no sentence has the end with because, because, because, is a conjunction”.
This too was a great answer to an amazing question and this shows how skillful and active Annadurai was in his proficiency in English and how he amazed people around him with his quick answers.
Interesting Mathematical story : The story of the Hardy-Ramanujan Number 1729
In the end
So, this is the story about the presence of mind. We do share such a story every week. Just bookmark and visit our website regularly. If you know such a story we all wanted to know as well. Please Let me know via comment.
