 Backstories for the characters Max and Sol were conceived by Sean  Guilette and Darren Aronofsky, but never written for the film. They  included: Max was proved to be a math prodigy very young, and soon  attended Columbia University, where he met Sol, an Russian  expatriate, who was captured by American Forces and was given the  chance to assist in the building of nuclear weapons because of his  great math prowess, he refused, and was relocated to Siberia, where  he was soon let out, and got a job teaching math at Columbia  University. If you look closely at Sols wrists, you can see prison  tattoos.