He is obsessed with aperiodic tile patterns. (Imagine a floor tiled in a pattern that never repeats.) When Myhrvold built his own house, on the shores of Lake Washington, outside Seattle a vast, silvery hypermodernist structure described by his wife as the place in the sci-fi movie where the aliens live he embedded some sixty aperiodic patterns in the walls, floors, and ceilings.

NEWYORKER: In the Air