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A theorem can’t be accepted as a theorem unless it has a proof. The astounding part of the mathematical side of Ramanujan’s story is that he didn’t know what a proof was.Ī theorem isn’t a theorem unless it carries a solid, fail-proof, fool-proof proof. You also remember a theorem needs a proof, right? You do know what’s a theorem, don’t you? Those ghastly little statements that appear as commandments in high-school geometry textbooks. His formal education did not exceed matriculation (though back then, it wasn’t that bad), but each of his equations and theorems continue to confound and charm post-doctorates students alike the world over even today.
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Ramanujan, once a clerk at Port Trust Office at Madras (now Chennai), didn’t have enough papers to write the enormous amount of theorems and equations he came up with. The son of an extremely religious mother, whose strict persona almost overshadowed his genius, Ramanujan spent his childhood in Kumbakonam.
THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY MOVIE
(If the teasers on youtube are any indicators, the movie seems to be a little over the top, but one had better not comment so early.) April was declared as the Mathematics Awareness month, and the film comes at the right time to bring into focus a subject that is revered and feared in equal measures. A life in numbersĪ still from the movie, 'The man who Knew Infinity'ĭirected by Mathew Brown the biopic, The Man who knew Infinity, releases today. The research couldn’t have been easy by any standards - Ramanujan died 96 years ago this day (well, almost. Beyond the captivating narrative, it is very detailed in its research. Kanigel did a wonderful job in telling us almost everything we wanted to know about the man Ramanujan.
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…(as Hardy) entered the room where Ramanujan lay in a bed and declared…1729 was rather a dull number. “No, Hardy,” said Ramanujan. Once, in the taxi from London, Hardy (while visiting an ailing Ramanujan) noticed its number, 1729. Here’s the anecdote as it appears in Robert Kanigel’s 1991 book, The Man who knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan. Sounds very believable, considering that Ramanujan explained the beauty of 1729 when Hardy was visiting an ill Ramanujan. Hardy, a celebrated mathematician himself who considered his own life’s greatest contribution to mathematics as the discovery of Ramanujan, put it, numbers were “personal friends of Ramanujan.” So in 2 times 2 times 2 equal 8, you find the cube of 2 is 8.) 1729 is the sum of the cubes of 10 and 9 (1000 and 729 respectively) as well as the sum of the cubes of 12 and 1 (1728 and 1 respectively). (A cube of a number is the number multiplied by itself three times over. Simply put, 1729 is the smallest number that can be expressed as the sum of two different cubes in two different ways. Though 1729 is not exactly the mathematician’s most important contribution, it certainly is one of the most enduring in public memory. This number, or rather the beauty of the number, was expounded by Srinivasa Ramanujan Iyengar, considered by many as one of the greatest mathematicians of all times and certainly India’s greatest in centuries. If you are into mathematics, you would have heard of 1729.
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When you hear “You too?” you think of either the bard ( the bard, mind you) or the ruler he wrote about. When you see a bitten apple, you think of Steve Jobs (or Alan Turing, depending on what you know of this computer scientist). It is quite intriguing that many a great life is remembered in conjunction with extremely short expressions.įor instance, when you think of Einstein, it is difficult not to think of the equation E = mc 2.