Ramanujan

Star Talk on the National Geographic Channel is one of my favorite programs. I  mentioned it before in my December, 2016 blog. It is hosted by astrophysicist Neil de Grasse Tyson and is broadcast from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Most recently I watched an episode about Srinivasa Ramanujan, a mostly uneducated Hindu man from Madras, India who, at the turn of the twentieth century, was a self-taught mathematical genius.

A novel about his life by Robert Kenegal called, The Man Who Knew Infinity was recently made into a film of the same name. His story is fascinating. His obsession with Math caused him to actually drop out of college twice. He said his mathematical knowledge, theories, formulas and proofs came to him from his Kuladevata (Namagiri, a family deity) during meditation.

Ramanujan’s passion led him to contact several mathematical professionals who dismissed him as a crackpot. Finally, G.H. Hardy, renowned mathmetician and Trinity College at Cambridge professor, took notice and brought him to England. In a letter to Hardy, Ramanujan had included a pair of equations now called the Rogers-Ramanujan identities. Although he did not understand the equations, Hardy recognized the possible brilliance of this unlikely man. Tragically, Ramanujan died at thirty-two. He left behind three shabby notebooks containing thousands of equations. Among them were a series of special numbers which were the precursor of String Theory and Quantum Gravity (which were not known to exist) along with the identities which are still being studied a hundred years later.

Ken Ono, professor of Math at Emory University was an advisor on the film and had this to say, I paraphrase, “Math progress is usually the result of the work of thousands of people. But, occasionally, the fireball genius of one person propels thought forward.” He is at work with many other scholars trying to prove the Rogers-Ramanujan identities.

The thing that stays with me is how is this possible? Without education, without tutoring, how did this knowledge come to him? He knew things a hundred years before other scholars even dreamed of solutions. There is so much we don’t know. So much we don’t understand. It is a mystery of mind-baffling proportion. And beautiful, yes?

Srinivasa Ramanujan