Watch what Ken Ono, mathematics professor at Emory University and math consultant for the film, has to say about Ramanujan: In 1920, he died, aged 32, in Kumbakonam, but not before leaving the world with a plethora of theorems and discoveries in mathematics, which were researched and proved to be true years after his death. He was then diagnosed with vitamin deficiency and tuberculosis. Life for vegetarians was difficult during First World War, due to a scarcity of vegetables and fruits, which made him malnutritioned. An onset of various kinds of illnesses had made him weak. ![]() He was one of the youngest (at 30) at the Society, being only the second Indian to become a Fellow there, and the first at Trinity. The next year, he became a part of the London Mathematical Society, and the year after that, he became a Fellow of Trinity College and Fellow of the Royal Society. Owing to his work on highly composite numbers, in 1916 he received a Bachelor of Science degree, which was later renamed to PhD. In the next five years at Cambridge, Ramanujan published many of his work there, aided by Hardy. They found that while some of them already existed, many of them were new, unparalleled discoveries. Once in Cambridge, Hardy and Littlewood combed through his collection of theorems. This was the turning point in the 27-year-old’s life. Jeremy Irons (left) portrays Hardy, while Toby Jones (right) plays Littlewood Source: YouTubeīidding farewell to his wife and child, Ramanujan arrived in England by ship in April 1914. Littlewood were impressed enough to call Ramanujan to England. Hardy was to be the one who would believe in Ramanujan’s skills. In 1913, he began writing letters to British mathematicians. Ramanujan, at this point, started mingling with India’s mathematicians, wowing them with his brilliance. Meanwhile, the Indian Mathematics Society was set up by V. In 1909, he was married to 10-year-old Srimithi Janaki, and tutored students while he looked for a job. After a stint at another college, he gave up getting a degree altogether. He failed most of the subjects because he couldn’t focus on anything other than math. He then moved on to understanding the Bernoulli numbers.Īfter graduating in 1904 from the Town Higher Secondary School, he joined the Government Arts College in Kumbakonam. By 16, he mastered a book called A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics, which held a collection of 5000 theorems. He studied a book on advanced trigonometry at 13, learnt cubic equations at 15, and devised his own methods of solving them. His intelligence began to shine when in school in Kumbakonam, he imbibed more mathematical knowledge than anyone of his age. While almost all of his siblings died in their infancy, he miraculously survived a case of smallpox at the age of two. He was born in December of 1887 in Erode, Tamil Nadu. ![]() Ramanujan is played by Dev Patel in the film, The Man Who Knew Infinity Source: Wikimedia Commons, YouTube A self-educated mathematician, Ramanujan was known for his theorems that contributed significantly to understanding number series, infinite series and continued fractions. His life was chronicled in the book The Man Who Knew Infinity by Robert Kanigel, published in 1991. This April, a biopic based on the brilliant Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, is all set to release. Like the misunderstood genius Alan Turing ( The Imitation Game), or the inspiring Stephen Hawking ( Theory of Everything), a peek into a past that we can only read of, overcoming obstacles that we can only imagine, makes us remember and respect these gifted minds. Movies about mathematicians excite us mostly because their ingenuity is both unfathomable and fascinating to us. The Man Who Knew Infinity, starring Dev Patel, is a biopic on his life. Srinivasa Ramanujan, a self-educated mathematician, pioneered brilliant discoveries of theorems.
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