10 Cool Things about Srinivasa Ramanujan

I new very little about this person until recently. One way math teachers know about him is the fact that he often get a half page bio in math books. He is probably included so the company can show that their book is multicultural and perhaps that will lead to more sales. I hate to be cynical like that, but I noticed that once when on a textbook adoption committee. We had a sheet in which potential adoptions were given points in various categories. One was how multicultural it was. I guess it makes financial sense for the companies to load up multicultural references.

While that is a good idea, students often catch on to some of the overreaching. One story problem example was (yes, an actual example) "One day Running Bear was ..." Its fine, but pretty transparent what they are trying to do.

Back to Ramanujan (accent on the "nu" syllable and pronounced "new"). He didn't really do a lot of applied mathematics. Most of his work was in number theory and analysis.

He is featured quite a bit in the book The Music of the Primes. There is a book and a movie about his life The Man Who Knew Infinity. I recently saw the movie and I thought it was very good. And unlike many "biographical" movies, it didn't take liberties with the person's life.

Here are a few, I think, interesting tidbits of the life of Ramanujan:

1. Born and died in India, but much of his mathematical work was done at Trinity College in England.
2. Lived from 1887 to 1920, only 33 years.
3. In the movie he is played by Dev Patel, who was also the main actor in Slumdog Millionaire. G.H. Hardy was played by Jeremy Irons, who for me will always be the voice of Scar in The Lion King.
4. He had almost no formal training in mathematics.
5. He came to the attention of famous mathematician G.H. Hardy at Trinity College after writing to him.
6. Despite an invitation, he was at first hesitant to go as crossing the seas, according to his religion, could make him an outcast.
7. Suffered poor health all his life, but it was aggravated by the food at Trinity not matching well with his vegetarianism.
8. As his heath and depression became worse he attempted suicide by jumping in front of a London train.
9. A famous quotation is, "An equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God."
10. A major coup was finding one of his lost notebooks in 1976.