"Sixty Million Trillion Combinations" is a short mystery story by American writer Isaac Asimov.
[1] The story is one of a collection of short mysteries whose characters are based loosely upon the Trap Door Spiders, a stag-club of which Asimov was a member.
The host of the group — that is, the member who pays for everyone else's dinner that month — usually brings a guest for the evening, who will then be "grilled," or questioned, when dessert has been finished and supper has reached the brandy stage.
As usual, the Black Widowers have discussed, during the pre-supper cocktails, a matter that will appear important later: the apparently unimportant subject of alliteration, or, to be more precise, first letters.
Trumbull explains that his department is concerned with the important computations and, subsequently, with the paranoia of a mathematician, Vladimir Pochik, who suspects that his work on Goldbach's conjecture has been stolen.