6 ms·

125th Birthday of Ramanujan

243 points by vipinsahu 14y ago

one of the greatest mathematicians human race has ever known

seanlinehan 14y ago
This man had unimaginable genius!
donretag 14y ago
I recommend the fantastic book: The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan. A good read even for someone not into mathematics.
- bitdiddle 14y ago
  +1 - a wonderful story and very accessible
- kranner 14y ago
  I'd like to mention David Leavitt's The Indian Clerk: historical fiction about Hardy and Ramanujan. I enjoyed it very much.
theanalyst 14y ago
A good tribute to the genius he was
pjscott 14y ago
I wonder what's special about the number 125? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1729_(number) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1729_(number)
- statictype 14y ago
  Wasn't 1729 also the name of the team Waterhouse was part of in Cryptonomicon?
  - packetslave 14y ago
    That was Detachment 2702 (which was originally Detachment 2701, but Lawrence worried that Rudy would notice the name since it's the product of two primes)
    - bwhite 14y ago
      Not just that, but two palindromic primes!
- rfurmani 14y ago
  125 is a power of 5 whose digits rearrange to a power of 2, namely 512, and I imagine its the only power that works like this. And if you complain about arbitrarily using base 10, that's just 2 times 5
  - gilgoomesh 14y ago
    > whose digits rearrange to I think rearranging digits until the result has interesting properties is a dubious claim to fame. It evokes the pseudomathematics of numerology and is only one step away from nonsense like "The Bible Code". Especially since "5 cubed" is respectable enough on its own.
playhard 14y ago
Google is honouring him with a doodle today Edit: Looks like Google is displaying it only in India https://www.google.co.in/ https://www.google.co.in/
- gjm11 14y ago
  Too bad nothing in the doodle has anything to do with anything Ramanujan did. (Beyond the level of "both contain square-root signs".)
soitgoes 14y ago
I enjoyed this documentary - Ramanujan: Letters from an Indian Clerk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OARGZ1xXCxs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OARGZ1xXCxs
hkmurakami 14y ago
I read GH Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology last month and adored the relationship Hardy and Ramanujan had. (great book by the way - easy to read for even a non math person)
casca 14y ago
The Complicité theatre company made a wonderful play about Ramanujan called A Disappearing Number that was excellent and widely praised http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/sep/15/a-disappearing-number-review http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/sep/15/a-disappearing-n... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Disappearing_Number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Disappearing_Number
fpp 14y ago
Bill Gosper used Ramanujan's formula to calculate the first 17 million digits of pi
yarapavan 14y ago
Here is AMS Editor, Krishnaswami Alladi's, notice on the same - http://www.ams.org/notices/201211/rtx121101522p.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/201211/rtx121101522p.pdf The Hindu newspaper celebrates Ramanujan@125 here - http://www.thehindu.com/system/topicRoot/Ramanujan___125/ http://www.thehindu.com/system/topicRoot/Ramanujan___125/
yarapavan 14y ago
UFL recenlty held a conference to commemorate the 125th anniversary of Ramanujan's birth. http://www.math.ufl.edu/~fgarvan/ramanujan125.html http://www.math.ufl.edu/~fgarvan/ramanujan125.html
dctoedt 14y ago
From the article: 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". We can only marvel at (1) the human brain, the workings of which we know so little (as recent events in Newtown tragically reminded us in a very different way); and (2) mathematics, with which such a brain was able somehow to interact so fruitfully.
lightcatcher 14y ago
This thread on reddit (/r/math) celebrating Ramanujan's 125th birthday highlights some of his most interesting results and stories about him: http://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/159q0h/today_is_srinivasa_ramanujans_birthday/ http://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/159q0h/today_is_sriniv...
vineel 14y ago
I was watching Good Will Hunting last night. I didn't realize this guy was real.
simplekoala 14y ago
He died at the young age of 32! What a tragedy! Simply amazing what he had accomplished by then. Always wondered the impact he would have had had he not died at such an young age.
- redfalcon6 14y ago
  I read the bio - and it appears that he was partly killed by the Brits' crappy food! "But the alien climate and culture took a toll on his health. Ramanujan had always lived in a tropical climate and had his mother (later his wife) to cook for him: now he faced the English winter, and he had to do all his own cooking to adhere to his caste's strict dietary rules."
  - andrewcooke 14y ago
    it was during a war. there was little food for everyone. he was also a strict vegetarian, which didn't help, and he was suffering from tb.
ajays 14y ago
A young George Polya, the Hungarian mathematician (and Stanford faculty) was in England once, and asked Hardy to see one of Ramanujan's notebooks. The next day, he returned the notebook in a panic, saying "there is so much in there, that I'll spend my entire life working on these proofs and never be able to do any original work". (paraphrased). Ramanujan's accounts of how he arrived at the proofs ("the Goddess revealed it to me"), reminds me of Paul Erdos's "theory", that "God" has a big book of all possible proofs, called "The Book"; and if you're a nice mathematician, once in a while He will open the book and reveal one to you. Taking up this thread, a couple of mathematicians compiled some of the most beautiful proofs and published them as "Proofs from The Book". http://www.amazon.com/Proofs-THE-BOOK-Martin-Aigner/dp/3642008550 http://www.amazon.com/Proofs-THE-BOOK-Martin-Aigner/dp/36420...
sksk 14y ago
I a huge fan of Ramanujan and one of my favorite story of his is: Ramanujan was in school and his teacher was explaining the concept of division when the numerator and denominator are the same. The teacher says "if there are 5 people in the class and we have 5 apples, then each one will get one apple. If we have 10 people and 10 apples, then each one will still get one apple". Ramanujan asks the teacher, if there are zero people in the class and there are zero apples, will each person still get one apple? I am not sure how old he was at that time but going by the topic, must have been in middle school. Amazing how his mind worked even at that young an age... I believe the story was also mentioned in The Man Who Knew Infinity (but don't remember if the narrative is the same or not).
Selfcommit 14y ago
They mention that Hardy and Ramanujan solved P(n) - but I can't seem to find any information on their solution. I'm not a maths person but this perked my interest - Anyone have more information?
- gjm11 14y ago
  They found an asymptotic series for p(n) -- the number of partitions of n, i.e. the number of ways to write n as a sum of positive integers where you don't count 1+2 and 2+1 as different ways -- with the property that if you take an appropriate number of terms, the nearest integer to the result equals p(n) exactly. Hans Rademacher later tweaked this to give a convergent series that gives p(n) exactly. The first term of the series (both Hardy&Ramanujan's and Rademacher's) is 1/(4 n sqrt(3)) exp(pi sqrt(2n/3)), which is already a good approximation in the sense that the ratio p(n)/this_approximation(n) tends to 1 as n gets large. This approximation theorem was conjectured by Ramanujan before he came to England, and proved by him and Hardy jointly. You can find the actual formulae at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_%28number_theory%29#Approximation_formulas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_%28number_theory%29#A... and more details at http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Sp7z9sK7RNkC&pg=PA68&lpg=PA68 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Sp7z9sK7RNkC&pg=PA68&... .
lukazmith 14y ago
But was he poisoned by a jealous Brit? We will never know :(
sunnybythesea 14y ago
His life story would make a very inspirational film. I see this old link from 2006 about an upcoming film, but can't find any stories about the finished film. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4811920.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4811920.stm Was it cancelled perhaps?
- andrewcooke 14y ago
  there's a summary of attempts here - http://www.indiastudychannel.com/resources/146675-A-film-an-Indian-mathematical-prodigy.aspx http://www.indiastudychannel.com/resources/146675-A-film-an-...
31reasons 14y ago
The question is in this day and age why can't we find another Ramanujan ? Have we somehow destroyed the ecosystem in which such a mind could exist and have a capacity for deep thoughts. Was he so special that someone like him could exist once every millennia. How many Ramanujans died before they could meet their Prof Hardy. Just wondering..

243 points by vipinsahu 14y ago

one of the greatest mathematicians human race has ever known

seanlinehan 14y ago

This man had unimaginable genius!

donretag 14y ago

I recommend the fantastic book: The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan. A good read even for someone not into mathematics.

bitdiddle 14y ago
+1 - a wonderful story and very accessible
kranner 14y ago
I'd like to mention David Leavitt's The Indian Clerk: historical fiction about Hardy and Ramanujan. I enjoyed it very much.

theanalyst 14y ago

A good tribute to the genius he was

pjscott 14y ago

I wonder what's special about the number 125? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1729_(number) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1729_(number)

statictype 14y ago
Wasn't 1729 also the name of the team Waterhouse was part of in Cryptonomicon?
- packetslave 14y ago
  That was Detachment 2702 (which was originally Detachment 2701, but Lawrence worried that Rudy would notice the name since it's the product of two primes)
  - bwhite 14y ago
    Not just that, but two palindromic primes!
rfurmani 14y ago
125 is a power of 5 whose digits rearrange to a power of 2, namely 512, and I imagine its the only power that works like this. And if you complain about arbitrarily using base 10, that's just 2 times 5
- gilgoomesh 14y ago
  > whose digits rearrange to I think rearranging digits until the result has interesting properties is a dubious claim to fame. It evokes the pseudomathematics of numerology and is only one step away from nonsense like "The Bible Code". Especially since "5 cubed" is respectable enough on its own.

playhard 14y ago

Google is honouring him with a doodle today Edit: Looks like Google is displaying it only in India https://www.google.co.in/ https://www.google.co.in/

gjm11 14y ago
Too bad nothing in the doodle has anything to do with anything Ramanujan did. (Beyond the level of "both contain square-root signs".)

soitgoes 14y ago

I enjoyed this documentary - Ramanujan: Letters from an Indian Clerk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OARGZ1xXCxs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OARGZ1xXCxs

hkmurakami 14y ago

I read GH Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology last month and adored the relationship Hardy and Ramanujan had. (great book by the way - easy to read for even a non math person)

casca 14y ago

The Complicité theatre company made a wonderful play about Ramanujan called A Disappearing Number that was excellent and widely praised http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/sep/15/a-disappearing-number-review http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/sep/15/a-disappearing-n... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Disappearing_Number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Disappearing_Number

fpp 14y ago

Bill Gosper used Ramanujan's formula to calculate the first 17 million digits of pi

yarapavan 14y ago

Here is AMS Editor, Krishnaswami Alladi's, notice on the same - http://www.ams.org/notices/201211/rtx121101522p.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/201211/rtx121101522p.pdf The Hindu newspaper celebrates Ramanujan@125 here - http://www.thehindu.com/system/topicRoot/Ramanujan___125/ http://www.thehindu.com/system/topicRoot/Ramanujan___125/

yarapavan 14y ago

UFL recenlty held a conference to commemorate the 125th anniversary of Ramanujan's birth. http://www.math.ufl.edu/~fgarvan/ramanujan125.html http://www.math.ufl.edu/~fgarvan/ramanujan125.html

dctoedt 14y ago

From the article: 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". We can only marvel at (1) the human brain, the workings of which we know so little (as recent events in Newtown tragically reminded us in a very different way); and (2) mathematics, with which such a brain was able somehow to interact so fruitfully.

lightcatcher 14y ago

This thread on reddit (/r/math) celebrating Ramanujan's 125th birthday highlights some of his most interesting results and stories about him: http://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/159q0h/today_is_srinivasa_ramanujans_birthday/ http://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/159q0h/today_is_sriniv...

vineel 14y ago

I was watching Good Will Hunting last night. I didn't realize this guy was real.

simplekoala 14y ago

He died at the young age of 32! What a tragedy! Simply amazing what he had accomplished by then. Always wondered the impact he would have had had he not died at such an young age.

redfalcon6 14y ago
I read the bio - and it appears that he was partly killed by the Brits' crappy food! "But the alien climate and culture took a toll on his health. Ramanujan had always lived in a tropical climate and had his mother (later his wife) to cook for him: now he faced the English winter, and he had to do all his own cooking to adhere to his caste's strict dietary rules."
- andrewcooke 14y ago
  it was during a war. there was little food for everyone. he was also a strict vegetarian, which didn't help, and he was suffering from tb.

ajays 14y ago

A young George Polya, the Hungarian mathematician (and Stanford faculty) was in England once, and asked Hardy to see one of Ramanujan's notebooks. The next day, he returned the notebook in a panic, saying "there is so much in there, that I'll spend my entire life working on these proofs and never be able to do any original work". (paraphrased). Ramanujan's accounts of how he arrived at the proofs ("the Goddess revealed it to me"), reminds me of Paul Erdos's "theory", that "God" has a big book of all possible proofs, called "The Book"; and if you're a nice mathematician, once in a while He will open the book and reveal one to you. Taking up this thread, a couple of mathematicians compiled some of the most beautiful proofs and published them as "Proofs from The Book". http://www.amazon.com/Proofs-THE-BOOK-Martin-Aigner/dp/3642008550 http://www.amazon.com/Proofs-THE-BOOK-Martin-Aigner/dp/36420...

sksk 14y ago

I a huge fan of Ramanujan and one of my favorite story of his is: Ramanujan was in school and his teacher was explaining the concept of division when the numerator and denominator are the same. The teacher says "if there are 5 people in the class and we have 5 apples, then each one will get one apple. If we have 10 people and 10 apples, then each one will still get one apple". Ramanujan asks the teacher, if there are zero people in the class and there are zero apples, will each person still get one apple? I am not sure how old he was at that time but going by the topic, must have been in middle school. Amazing how his mind worked even at that young an age... I believe the story was also mentioned in The Man Who Knew Infinity (but don't remember if the narrative is the same or not).

Selfcommit 14y ago

They mention that Hardy and Ramanujan solved P(n) - but I can't seem to find any information on their solution. I'm not a maths person but this perked my interest - Anyone have more information?

gjm11 14y ago
They found an asymptotic series for p(n) -- the number of partitions of n, i.e. the number of ways to write n as a sum of positive integers where you don't count 1+2 and 2+1 as different ways -- with the property that if you take an appropriate number of terms, the nearest integer to the result equals p(n) exactly. Hans Rademacher later tweaked this to give a convergent series that gives p(n) exactly. The first term of the series (both Hardy&Ramanujan's and Rademacher's) is 1/(4 n sqrt(3)) exp(pi sqrt(2n/3)), which is already a good approximation in the sense that the ratio p(n)/this_approximation(n) tends to 1 as n gets large. This approximation theorem was conjectured by Ramanujan before he came to England, and proved by him and Hardy jointly. You can find the actual formulae at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_%28number_theory%29#Approximation_formulas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_%28number_theory%29#A... and more details at http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Sp7z9sK7RNkC&pg=PA68&lpg=PA68 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Sp7z9sK7RNkC&pg=PA68&... .

lukazmith 14y ago

But was he poisoned by a jealous Brit? We will never know :(

sunnybythesea 14y ago

His life story would make a very inspirational film. I see this old link from 2006 about an upcoming film, but can't find any stories about the finished film. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4811920.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4811920.stm Was it cancelled perhaps?

andrewcooke 14y ago
there's a summary of attempts here - http://www.indiastudychannel.com/resources/146675-A-film-an-Indian-mathematical-prodigy.aspx http://www.indiastudychannel.com/resources/146675-A-film-an-...

31reasons 14y ago

The question is in this day and age why can't we find another Ramanujan ? Have we somehow destroyed the ecosystem in which such a mind could exist and have a capacity for deep thoughts. Was he so special that someone like him could exist once every millennia. How many Ramanujans died before they could meet their Prof Hardy. Just wondering..