Today's quiz question

Each week in the Guardian Review there is a column entitled 'My Hero': a large photo and a short passage by some well-known person explaining why they have chosen this particular hero. Today's was an unexpected conjunction. Even without the picture, it's perhaps not difficult to identify the hero:

"In the 1950s I was an athlete. Those were the days before joggers clogged the highway, so it was unusual for me to see another runner when I was training. We fell into the habit of meeting up and pounding the miles together for company.

He was stocky, barrel-chested, with a high-pitched, donnish voice and the aerodynamics of a brick. He was funny and witty and he talked endlessly, but I understood very little of what he was saying, and it became clear that he ran in order to think. He seemed to be obsessed by mathematics and biology. That much I could work out.."

but the writer - and he is a writer, that's not giving much away - is not someone I would have associated with him.

And the answer is...