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Math is still catching up to the genius of Ramanujan
- arkj 2y agoI don’t understand why people praise Ramanuja so much. Why not this praise for Euler or Gauss?
- xoxxala 2y agoInteresting. My experience with maths education is pretty much limited to watching Numberphile and other YT videos these days, but Euler and Gauss get plenty of praise.
- airstrike 2y agoI have no idea how you could possibly have picked up the notion that Euler and Gauss are not praised enough. They are literally the top two names when you google "greatest mathematicians all time" https://i.imgur.com/AzL6hVQ.png https://i.imgur.com/AzL6hVQ.png
- uptownfunk 2y agoThere is something cult like, mystic, almost magical about Ramanujan that almost transcends the raw intellectual horsepower (which he certainly had).
- fragmede 2y agoThere is such praise, just not on this post, but what's powerful about the story of Ramanuja is where he came from. The almost-miss that the world would not have his genius, but for a couple of lucky turns, is a powerful driving story about a diamond in the rough. I'm no such a genius, but the idea of being discovered is very alluring; to idly fantasize that I have some gift that could lead me to fame and riches. It's that nice feeling to hold while reading and thinking about his story.
- datavirtue 2y agoWhy aren't we working on drugs to make people smart?
- hereme888 2y agoWe did and still are. You can only safely push hardware so much.
- NAHWheatCracker 2y agoLots of people are, they're called nootropics. Whether they are successful and whether they are mostly a bunch of snake oil is another question...
- babyent 2y agoI feel way more productive since going sxe. I am naturally so tired around 9pm when I shut the lid of my laptop that I fall asleep within minutes of getting in bed. On a side note.. Somehow my dreams have been insane and I’ve low key enjoyed the vivid worlds I find myself in over the past few months. Wake up around 5 or 6, go for a stroll and then eat some breakfast. Then I can work taking only breaks for lunch and dinner. Sometimes a 30 min nap in the afternoon in the park.
- aspenmayer 2y agoFor those unfamiliar with the abbreviation sxe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_edge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_edge > Straight edge (sometimes abbreviated as sXe or signified by XXX or simply X) is a subculture of hardcore punk whose adherents refrain from using alcohol, tobacco, and recreational drugs in reaction to the punk subculture's excesses. Some adherents refrain from engaging in promiscuous or casual sex, follow a vegetarian or vegan diet and do not consume caffeine or prescription drugs. The term "straight edge" was adopted from the 1981 song "Straight Edge" by the hardcore punk band Minor Threat.
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- babyent 2y agoThat was a fun read. What really stuck out to me was how R failed in a bunch of other subjects except math because he wasn’t interested in them. I know society and norms expect students to learn all these other subjects. But what if those just aren’t interesting to someone? I wonder how many geniuses we skip on because doing the chores of homework and getting through boring classes is busywork and memorization for the sake of getting an A. Meanwhile, hardly anyone actually remembers anything about those topics and even the best students mostly go on to achieve only above average things. My class valedictorian went on to become a doctor and while that is certainly impressive to me, there are many doctors and he practices (like almost every other doctor) and isn’t pushing the boundaries of medical science. I feel terrible writing that because I’m certainly not as smart as him, but R is just so impressive and I’m glad he got his lucky break. People like R would be lost in the sea of averages because their genius would be kept shut by norms. Almost every extraordinary person I read about seems like they were 1 step away from being forgotten, and got some huge universal break that boosted them.
- nordsieck 2y agoIMO, you're thinking about this backwards. It's good that public school exposes children to many subjects - hopefully most of them. So that they can discover if they click with one of them. The real danger is that someone never gets exposed to a subject at all. College is the place to specialize in a subject.
- energy123 2y agoThe exposure to subjects isn't the problem, this is the problem: https://paulgraham.com/lesson.html https://paulgraham.com/lesson.html
- Onavo 2y agoBut if their overall SAT scores aren't good enough to get into the elite colleges, won't we just be denying the eccentric geniuses?
- coliveira 2y ago
- dyauspitr 2y agoRamanujan’s story is very interesting but I would love more Indian mathematicians and scientists to become household names. Mathematicians like Harish Chandra, C. R. Rao, Manjul Bhargava, Narendra Karmakar etc. Physicists like C. V. Raman, Satyendra Nath Bose, Meghnad Saha. Others like Har Gobind Khorana and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan too.
- xanderlewis 2y ago> Satyendra Nath Bose I imagine most people won't recognise the name. But everyone's heard of a boson. So he's somewhat immortalised — more than most.
- sulam 2y agoFwiw Chandra, Rao, and Bose are instantly recognizable to me. I’m not a mathematician or physicist and don’t know the other folks. That said I am very aware that Indians have made significant contributions to math, physics and I imagine other disciplines.
- profsummergig 2y agoWhen I first encountered the Mahalanobis distance, I thought it sounded strangely Indian. Turned out it was!
- ks2048 2y agoYou're right, some Indians don't have the recognition they deserve, but if it makes you feel better, few "western" mathematicians or scientists are household names either.
- esperent 2y agoHowever, pretty much all of the ones who are household names, are western. Well, at least to western people. Are Indians more familiar with Indian scientists?
- your_challenger 2y agoAmoung the people who are interested in science? Yes. But to the general public? No. I don't think a non STEM guy would know Ramanujan or C V Raman.
- lazyninja987 2y agofor people who are interested in Ramanujan's biography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Knew_Infinity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Knew_Infinity
- dangsux 2y ago[dead]
- profsummergig 2y agoIn the Ramanujan story, a true MVP is G.H. Hardy. He read letters from some random unknown guy (a savage "native" no less!) half the world away, and took them seriously. And then organized resources to have that guy travel to England. A true MVP. All the others Ramanujan wrote to ignored him (understandably so). Such a tragedy that he died so young.
- paulddraper 2y agoIf it had not been for Hardy, we would know a fraction of what R did.
- kumarm 2y agoIf you want to understand how human potential was wasted in old world, Ramanujan belongs to a caste in India that is only caste that is supposed to be educated (Representing probably < 5% of population) in those days. Ramanujan short life itself is a loss to the world, Imagine how many Ramanujan's were ignored where there is no G.H. Hardy and what about Ramanujans in the other 95%?
- maeil 2y agoIn the New World, the Ramanujans' lives are spent optimizing high-frequency trading, ads or video recommendation algorithms. This is arguably even worse for society than them not being discovered altogethrt.
- fragmede 2y agoArguably. Assuming that's actually where they end up, they earn lots of money and they get to choose what they want to do with it. We should force them to be mathematicians if they didn't want to be? The other version in the West is he moves to rural Montana and sends bombs through the mail.
- ImHereToVote 2y agoThose bombs might have done more good than his potential math career. Considering we just had our first AI millionaire. Perhaps there is hope for humanity to wake up.
- IAmGraydon 2y agoThe stories of mathematicians like Srinivasa Ramanujan, who claimed to have derived complex partitions and identities in dreams, have always captivated me. It's as if their minds were tapping into some hidden reservoir of knowledge. I'm curious what drives these intuitive leaps. Was Ramanujan's brain quietly processing patterns during sleep, leveraging its default mode network in ways we're still struggling to understand? Or was it something more fundamental – an emergent property of complex neural networks, perhaps, or even a glimpse into Jung's collective unconscious? I'm curious to hear how others think about this phenomenon. Do recent advances in neuroscience, AI, or cognitive psychology offer any clues about how innovators like Ramanujan access these hidden sources of insight? Or are we still stuck in the realm of "genius is mysterious"?
- yas_hmaheshwari 2y agoI am also intrigued by this question: What was different for guys like Ramanujan, and how were they able to tap in to this hidden reservoir of knowledge. And how can we replicate it One guy able to tap into this knowledge in dreams is an indication that it is possible. Now, how do we make this the default for everyone is the question I wonder about The way we found one variant of wheat in Mexico that was resistant to bacteria, and replicate that to the whole world -- can we do something like that for humans ( even I don't like the sound of it, but I hope you get the feeling )
- profsummergig 2y ago> The way we found one variant of wheat in Mexico that was resistant to bacteria, and replicate that to the whole world Great analogy. Borlaug's famous Mexican dwarves.
- gurjeet 2y ago> > ... found one variant of wheat in Mexico ... According to the Wikipedia page of Norman Borlaug, he _developed_ that variety of wheat.
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- barcode_feeder 2y ago"The statements had been proved 20 years earlier by a little-known English mathematician named L.J. Rogers... Rogers was content to do his research in relative obscurity, play piano, garden and apply his spare time to a variety of other pursuits" divinely inspiring
- jb1991 2y agoIndeed. Also is the retirement dream for many working software engineers.
- reddit_clone 2y agoIt boggles my mind what could have been if he had lived to a ripe old age.
- rramadass 2y agoFor people interested in learning more about Ramanujan and his Works; 1) Mathematics Wizard Srinivasa Ramanujan : Some glimpses into his Life and Work by two Indian Mathematicians Narendra Kumar Govil and Bhu Dev Sharma is a good biography with an introduction to his Mathematics and links to further resources. Good complement to Robert Kanigel's book The Man Who Knew Infinity. 2) In order to understand the fascination that Mathematicians have for Ramanujan see this and other lectures by Prof. Ken Ono who credits Ramanujan as his inspiration in becoming a Mathematician; Why Does Ramanujan, "The Man Who Knew Infinity," Matter? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ynhiZJUMzA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ynhiZJUMzA 3) Mathologer on Youtube has good walkthroughs of some of Ramanujan's most famous identities (eg. 1+2+3+... = -1/12) - https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mathologer+ramanujan https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mathologer+rama... 4) All of Ramanujan's published papers and unpublished notebooks can be found online at - http://ramanujan.sirinudi.org/ http://ramanujan.sirinudi.org/ PS: In the submitted article, George Andrews is wearing a Ramanujan tie :-)
- fuzzythinker 2y agoI enjoyed the movie on The Man Who Knew Infinity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Knew_Infinity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Knew_Infinity
- rramadass 2y agoAlso see some of Ramanujan biographic documentaries on Youtube, specifically; The Man Who Loved Numbers - Srinivasa Ramanujan documentary (1988) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqP2c5xNaTU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqP2c5xNaTU Srinivasa Ramanujan: The Mathematician and His Legacy (2016) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5jsgBvJMUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5jsgBvJMUc
- fuzzythinker 2y agoThank you! Really enjoyed the 2nd one. Haven't had the time for the 1st one yet.
- gurjeet 2y agodupe of: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41904553 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41904553
- uptownfunk 2y agoRamanujan responsible for inspiring generations of mathematicians throughout the world. His life was a beautiful tragedy. One that leaves me in awe and also great inner sadness. If you come from a hardcore traditional br*hmin family, just to cross over the ocean by boat would risk you getting excommunicated. The culture which he came from makes the entire story all the more legendary. Just cutting off your topknot and forgoing the dhoti to wear a western suit. We don’t understand what he went through and what he gave up to give us his mathematics. What he had to sacrifice to practice his art.. to be.
- thwori23423423 2y ago[flagged]
- uptownfunk 2y agoNo hate here. And you’re very much not quoting anything I said so who knows where you got that from. Don’t be so insecure.
- kitchi 2y agoLet's not be so aggressive. Comments on HN are meant to be for civil discussion, even on contentious topics.
- utkarsh858 2y agoHe attributed his success to his family Goddess, claiming he had dreams of scrolls unfurling theorems against a bloodied wall. "An equation for me has no meaning, unless it represents a thought of God" - Ramanujan
- gigatexal 2y agoI wish we lived in the multiverse where he didn’t die. Imagine what he could have done. Cool article though.
- monacobolid 2y ago> 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 And somehow this guy is remembered as a 'genius'...
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- rammer 2y agoObviously someone's burning
- H4rryp0tt3r 2y agoI wish Ramanujan's gods gave him a formula to calculate ignorance of people!
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- Alifatisk 2y agoThere is a movie covering his story, it's incredibly good!
- partomniscient 2y agoThe Man Who Knew Infinity [1] [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0787524/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0787524/
- scotty79 2y agoWhen we get to cloning people he's probably the most worthy person to get cloned first. Best chance of getting something usefult from a specific genetic makeup. You'd still probably need to make hundreds of clones to get one anywhere close to his level due to random epigenetics, even if raised in optimal environment but it's the best shot.
- joshuaissac 2y agoThe article talks about a recent paper[1] by one of the interviewees that uses McMahon partition functions for primality testing. I wonder how its running time of compares to that of the AKS primality test, and something more practical like BPSW.[2] Could it find an application in practical cryptography? 1. https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.06451v2 https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.06451v2 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baillie%E2%80%93PSW_primality_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baillie%E2%80%93PSW_primality_...
- debo_ 2y ago> “This is a very weird fact. It’s mysterious,” said Shashank Kanade of the University of Denver. “I mean, where did the 5 come from?” This is how I felt in 90% of my theoretical math classes in university.
- sourcepluck 2y agoThis thread is a good example of one of the perhaps overlooked reasons it can be hard to discuss education in our societies - any attempt at making a general point, or a meta-observation of some kind, quickly gets swallowed in a massive influx of personal anecdotes about things that happened to people during their education. Maybe there are other topics where the same phemonen exists. I'm not sure if off the top of my head I can think of one where it gets so intense so quickly - long, detailed, emotionally charged anecdotes immediately when school comes up! [I love a good yarn, and am not judging or belittling people for expressing themselves here, I must stress]. I have speculated in my comfy armchair as to why our education structures seem to make venting such a need for people. Anecdotally, there does seem to be a suggestion of some sort of lingering and powerful malaise around the whole thing, in any case. I wonder if it's like an abusive relationship - the emotional work required to move on and have better relationships (i.e., different educational structures) gets so large at some stage that all you can focus on is "coping". And you're sort of stuck, and the cycle more or less continues. EDIT: may I just add - I read that whole article, and am very fond of Ramanujan. He made university much harder for me when I learned about his existence, as my maths classes seemed so far removed from whatever it was he was doing.
- burkaman 2y agoI think it's just because every single person here has at least a decade of personal experience in education. One of the things many people like about HN is that when an article about some obscure subject is posted, there is often someone in the comments with personal experience who can share a story. Education is one of the few subjects where we can all be that person.
- cassepipe 2y agoMy guess would be it's because it's an experience (most of us) have in common in years full of first times. It's also an experience that took as least as much space in our life than work now does. It's also a place where we had to deal authority and groups. So whenever you make any point about education, if the point you are making seems to negate/go against the grain of my own experience, I will probably tell you :) (Venting is a need that everyone has when under pressure not sure it has anything to do with our education structures)
- achenet 2y agoMourtada was a professor of mine during undergrad. Really happy to see him in this article ^_^
- steelframe 2y agoMy education prepared me to make millions of dollars by the time I was in my mid-forties. I learned that if I take every task seriously and strive to do the absolute best I can on that task, no exceptions, regardless of how I personally felt about a subject or an assignment, I would end up being an employee that saw to it that anything I did, I did to the absolute best of my ability. Not every task ended up being worth doing, but some sure did. And regardless, more important than any one individual tasks, I earned a reputation with management. This in turn resulted in a steady stream of bonuses, stock grants, and promotions. I suppose I was doubly-fortunate to have focused my efforts in the tech industry from the early 90's onward. You have to be really unlucky for nose-to-the-grindstone efforts in FAANG companies to not work out pretty well for you from 2003-ish until today. With continued good health I can look forward to another 20 or 30 years of life, where I get to do whatever I want with my time because I earned so much money being content to conform to whatever my employers required of me. Nobody will remember my name, but that's okay with me, because I won't either.
- racl101 2y agoThat's cool!
- uptownfunk 2y agoThis is like looking at the kids who collect Pokemon cards out of the sheer love of the Pokemon and playing the game compared to the scalpers and “investors” / “speculators”. Yes they may end up with a lot of money but they will always lack that sweetness, purity, and wholesome joy that you see when a kid finds and enjoys something.
- runamuck 2y ago> Hardy, a mathematical giant in his own right, is said to have quipped that his greatest contribution to mathematics was the discovery of Ramanujan. I love the Humility and Kindness in Hardy's statement.
- kwar13 2y agoI cannot recommend reading A Mathematician's Apology enough. It was written by GH Hardy and I think it's one of the best non-math texts out there to understand how a mathematician's brain works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mathematician%27s_Apology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mathematician%27s_Apology Fairly short and beautifully written.
- dharma1 2y agoI often think about Ramanujan in the context of AI, if reasoning is type 2 thinking how did he (apparently) come across a lot of his ideas as intuitions
- chucknthem 2y agoI wonder if you can train a neuronetwork to have the kind of intuition Ramanujan had. How incredible would it be for math discoveries. Then separate AIs to try and prove or disprove the insights.
- dharma1 2y agoprobably but we don't know how to build that type of intuition. in humans or in machines. AlphaProof does do some kind of neural network guided search and automated theorem proving to validate it https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/ai-solves-imo-problems-at-silver-medal-level/ https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/ai-solves-imo-problems... But it's still fairly brute force and inefficient
- M_r_R_o_b_o_t_ 2y agoIs there a movie about it ?
- partomniscient 2y agoThe Man Who Knew Infinity [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0787524/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0787524/