In 1942, thanks to her exceptionally high grades, Huang Yiyi was sent on a Republic of China Ministry of Education scholarship to study for a PhD at the Mathematics department of MIT. One day John von Neumann came to give a lecture. Maybe she was deliberately planning to attract the attention of such a famous mathematician; anyway, in the break she got out her abacus and put on her long red false nails, and started click, click, clack, clack moving the beads. In an instant the great mathematician’s attention was captured and he watched in fascination. A year later, at the viva for her thesis, she saw him again, and he came up to her beforehand and said, ‘One of my assistants has just left. If your thesis defence is as impressive as your abacus use, you are welcome to come and work for me.’ She did go to work for von Neumann, which instantly made her famous in the world of mathematics. With the founding of the People’s Republic of China, six ministries and institutions (the Home Office, Foreign Affairs, Education, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and so on) came up with a list of patriots who should be invited back to help build a new China. Zhou Enlai himself signed the letters, which were sent to twenty-one individuals, one of whom was Huang Yiyi. She came back to China to become the youngest female professor anywhere in the country – at that time she was twenty-six years old. Later on she went to study for eight months in Moscow and came back with a nickname: Volga Fish. Very few people knew the story behind it.