"It's a trick," his granddaughter Mina said one winter evening, watching him erase for the tenth time.

∫ x sin(x) dx → Integration by parts: let u = x, dv = sin x dx → du = dx, v = -cos x = -x cos x + ∫ cos x dx = -x cos x + sin x + C

Elias never solved the hundredth integral. For forty years, he had filled notebooks with curled ribbons of symbols – ∫, dx, the patient grammar of calculus. Coroneos' list was his bible. Numbers 1 through 99 fell like dominoes. But number 100 – ∫ √(tan x) dx – refused.