Eccentric mathematics rock star Srinivasa Ramanujan, who died at age 33, postulated a combinatorics problem almost 100 years ago that’s just been solved (via Slashdot). The breakthrough may yield better cryptography, meaning more secure documents and transactions.
Any integer can be broken down into sums of smaller numbers (‘partitions’). A University of Wisconsin researcher has extended Ramanujan’s theorem and shown that the number of partitions in any large integer are divisible by all prime numbers.
The truly interesting bit is Ramanujan’s Indian Idol story. He was recruited to Cambridge from an underdeveloped farm system like a pitching prodigy from Puerto Rico:
… in 1913, the English mathematician G. H. Hardy received a strange letter from an unknown clerk in Madras, India. The ten-page letter contained about 120 statements of theorems on infinite series, improper integrals, continued fractions, and number theory… Every prominent mathematician gets letters from cranks… But something about the formulas made him take a second look… After a few hours, they concluded that the results “must be true because, if they were not true, no one would have had the imagination to invent them…” [Hoffman]
The next Einstein working alone in a room, surfacing out of nowhere to overturn the accepted paradigm: it’s every institution’s nightmare. The self-taught Ramanujan had flunked out of school in Tamil Nadu and run away from home because he obsessed over math and only math. Over time, he was granted an honorary doctorate by Cambridge and elected to the Royal Society of London, Valhalla for mathematicians.
Ramanujan was an intuitive thinker who disdained formalism:
Hardy was a great exponent of rigor in analysis, while Ramanujan’s results were (as Hardy put it) “arrived at by a process of mingled argument, intuition, and induction, of which he was entirely unable to give any coherent account…” He was amazed by Ramanujan’s uncanny formal intuition in manipulating infinite series, continued fractions, and the like: “I have never met his equal, and can compare him only with Euler or Jacobi.” [Hoffman]
Getting him interested in mathematical proofs was difficult:
… it was extremely difficult because every time some matter, which it was thought that Ramanujan needed to know, was mentioned, Ramanujan’s response was an avalanche of original ideas which made it almost impossible for Littlewood to persist in his original intention. [O’Connor & Robertson]
Ramanujan fell prey to two unfortunate Brahmin practices at the time, child marriage and the prohibition against traveling overseas:
He married on 14 July 1909 when his mother arranged for him to marry a ten year old girl, S Janaki Ammal. Ramanujan did not live with his wife, however, until she was twelve years old. [O’Connor & Robertson]He refused Hardy’s invitation, for it was unclean for a Brahmin to leave Indian shores… Hardy too, was very persistent, and Ramanujan agreed to go. But would his mother agree? Not by any means. Then one morning she announced that the family goddess Namagiri had ordered her to let him go, having shown her son in a large hall with a bunch of Europeans. [Surendran]
Being a vegetarian in WWI England was tough:
Right from the beginning, however, he had problems with his diet. The outbreak of World War I made obtaining special items of food harder and it was not long before Ramanujan had health problems. [O’Connor & Robertson]
Like Jim Morrison, only thinner, shorter, smarter and sober-er, Ramanujan died young. He supposedly passed away of a mystery illness, but my pet theory is he was tired of eating crappy British food like marmite. Here’s a British bio and a South Indian hagiography.
Thanks also to Deepa Iyengar and Suresh Venkatasubramanian for tipping us and reppin’ their Tam-Brahm peeps. Just once in my life, I’d like to see a hyphenated marital merger like Venkatasubramaniam-Varadarajan. Their kids would be not only intelligent, but also lingually skilled and popular with the ladies.
Is there a way to recommend interesting articles to be posted here?
I wanted to give you this article a week ago… but didnt know how.
Now world can browse through Ramanujan’s Lost Notebook, 29 years after its discovery – Indian Express March 13th 2005
http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=66357
psst…..just email tips [@] sepiamutiny [dhot] com!
-D
— (edited by admin for antispam)
Shucks, you beat me to my recommendation of this article. Go Tam-Brahm peeps and UW-Madison, my alma mater! How much of a nerd am I to know two of the mathematicians quoted in the New Scientist article?
My next mission is to discover the Tamil word for badger.
Mercy on me, gods of linguistics. There is a Tamil word for badger and it is thavazhkaradi (meaning “creeping bear”). And here I thought I was indulging in some badginage — horrible pun, I know.
You guys could put that postage stamp in one of the SM rotating banners
thavazhkaradi….hmm…I never knew that. What’s a beaver then? (Don’t be compelled to answer)
thavazhkaradi?
I think it’s going to be rather hard to do a Tamil translation of the Badger Song.
What an amazing story. I always wanted to be a mathematician, but proved time and again that my talent lay elsewhere. Haven’t found where I laid it yet, either.
Like “Jim Morrison”? Hmm, with that comparison we could also say he’s like John Belushi or Chris Farley…
Good post. Funny how my cousin’s hair looks exactly like Ramanujan’s hair back then, my uncle’s hair in the sixties and my hair as a kid… I wonder if Ramanujan has an Exponential Hair problem that needs to be cracked (or combed).
What am I talking about…
Sorry to take a tangent here but there may be substance in this somewhere?
Anyone know of any Vedic theory where the only way to transmute/port from one Brahmaan to another is only by way of spirit … and … Not by any means of energy or matter
… none of our known Western physiscs has yet enetered that region … and I believe it would be closer to the “string theory” = “Aum” (in my view) … dark matter … etc?
Vedic insights on “Spirit” dimension of physics would probably marry the “string theory”/Time/energy/matter and that is what the essence of Shiv-Sakti Narayan is.
Jai Swaminarayan to all … Krishan Patel.
That’s one of my favorite weebl creations! Doing it in Tamil would be quite easy, really – just say thavazkaradi three times fast. What’s the Tamil word for mushroom? Snake is naagam or paambu.
Somewhere, my ancestors’ ashes are spinning quite rapidly.
What do you mean by transmutation from one Brahmaan to another? Are you talking about transmutation from Atman to Brahman and the creation of another Atman? Also, IMHO, in their current known incarnations, conflating Vedic notions of spacetime with science’s latest unifying theory is still comparing apples and oranges.
I have always wondered why Einstein believed Hinduism will be the salvation of mankind … and then he went into all these theories paralleling what is in the Vedas … which unrelatedly it would seem are coming to some consensus in the “Scientific World”? … that all matter, energy time are and can only be unified using the String Theory … everything is a collection or condensation of vibrations … universal “Aum” ?
… Scientific American … National Geographic … etc are all acknowledging our Hindu concept of there being many Universes (14 Loks and innumerable Brahmaans)
… and when in Samadhi/Dhyaan … as Lord Shiva … seems to be in is when they are in concert with other Brahmaans ?
OK … time to go back to work … lunch “time” is over. and we are 7,000 miles/second away from where we we were in space when I started this …
OK – Maitri- I hadn’t heard the one for badger but mushroom is
nai – kodai ( dog’s umbrella)
tsk tsk. making fun of my name you are ? Much pain receive you will.
my wife’s last name is Ho, alas. Provides plenty of cognitive dissonance: Venkatsubramanian-Ho is rhythmically quite interesting imho 😉
robert kanigel’s the man who knew infinity is an excellent work about ramanujan. it even contains literary yo-mamma potshots, including one about his mother; it goes something like “even nine yards of sari could not disguise komalatammal’s corpulence.”
Krishan, this all sounds interesting. Could you provide a link to an article or reference that discusses these links??
ahh.. now it all makes sense.. I spent my highschool days at Kodaikanal International.. in South India and when it rained, there were mushrooms to be found all around.. hehe 🙂