Srinivasa Ramanujan brings life to the myth of the self-taught genius. He grew up poor and uneducated and did much of his research while isolated in southern India, barely able to afford food. In 1912, when he was 24, he began to send a series of letters to prominent mathematicians. These were mostly ignored, but one recipient, the English mathematician G.H. Hardy, corresponded with Ramanujan for a year and eventually persuaded him to come to England, smoothing the way with the colonial bureaucracies.
It became apparent to Hardy and his colleagues that Ramanujan could sense mathematical truths — could access entire worlds — that others simply could not. (Hardy, a mathematical giant in his own right, is said to have quipped that his greatest contribution to mathematics was the discovery of Ramanujan.) Before Ramanujan died in 1920 at the age of 32, he came up with thousands of elegant and surprising results, often without proof. He was fond of saying that his equations had been bestowed on him by the gods.
More than 100 years later, mathematicians are still trying to catch up to Ramanujan’s divine genius, as his visions appear again and again in disparate corners of the world of mathematics.
Math Is Still Catching Up to the Mysterious Genius of Srinivasa Ramanujan
I thought I mentioned Ramanujan before but a search says not. I have known of him for a longtime and admire the genius. He looked at the world and saw things no one has ever seen before or since. What could he have done with more training and education? Would the system blind his creativity? Would he transcend it? What triggers made him so talented? Was it genetics or some fascination like Einstein and the compass as a child? Are there others like him out there right now that are missing their chance because of the system or society? So many questions likely never to be answered.