Out of the many great figures manifested in British India, J. C. Bose (botanist, radar scientist), C. V. Raman (Nobel prize winning Physicist), M. Vishveshwariah (legendary civil engineer) and Srinivasa Ramanujan (Mathematician) stand apart. They were the supreme manifestation of India's mathematical and scientific genius. The first three lived long lives and celebrated across India in general and their home state in particular, the last one is known only among the educated elite of India. He enjoyed a very short but eventful life.
'The man who knew infinity' is a biography of this great Indian Mathematician written by Robert Kanigel little more than 2 decades back. It was a bestseller then, it is a bestseller now. Srinivasa Ramanujan was born in a poor Vaishnavite Tamil Brahmin family in Kumbakonam town in Madras Presidency on 22 Dec, 1887. He was a self taught man who could write impossible theorems before reaching 20 and without having any graduate level education. He was an eccentric to the core who would divulge in Mathematics at the peril of other subjects, his family and his health. His maths were so complex and advanced that no one in India could appreciate or measure its ingenuity. He lived at the threshold of poverty until 1910 when he got a recommendation and a job as a clerk in Madras Port Trust mainly by the efforts of one Ramaswami Iyer (founder of Indian Mathematical Society in 1906). He wrote many letters to eminent Mathematicians of the time and one such letter reached G. H. Hardy in Jan 1913 (eminent British Mathematician of the time). G. H. Hardy and other friends/patrons of Ramanujan in India helped him to got to Cambridge to do Mathematical Research in 1914. In England he published many papers and became the fellow of Royal Society in 1918, a very rare honour for any mathematician. He made a remarkable progress in number theory, elliptical function, prime number theorems, mock theta function, partition etc although he did not know how to use blankets tucked with mattress in a British bed. His health suffered mainly because of the strict adherence to his vegetarian diet, scarcity of sunlight and food during WW-1 and his family feuds. His heath deteriorated starting 1917, reached India in March 1919 and died in April 1920, he was not even 33. An abrupt end to a life that promised a lot. Kanigel had written this book with a lot of Maths understanding but this book could have been much better, had he concentrated more on Ramanujan's theorems and works.
This books should serve as an inspiration to all of us, if a poor guy with no formal education of any high order can do these miracles then all of us can definitely out-cross our own little boundaries and achievements without clamoring about the system and limitations.
Highly recommended (9/10).
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