Knuth's brilliance and eccentricity (or autism?) are a package deal. He's a guy who wanted to write mathematics papers, got side-tracked into creating a type-s

Knuth's brilliance and eccentricity (or autism?) are a package deal. He's a guy who wanted to write mathematics papers, got side-tracked into creating a type-setting program (TeX), then got side-side-tracked into creating a font language (Metafont).