Self-Taught Number Theorist
The Indian Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920) “Giant” of number theory, the self-taught Mathematician. There have been other such giants who displayed similar prowess, for example, the polymath John Von Neumann (1903-1957), who is responsible for developing the stored program concept of computer science and who by the age of fourteen was fluent in nine languages and who was part of the elite team assembled at Los Alamos, New Mexico during the so-called Manhattan Project to develop the A-bomb before Nazi Germany could during WWII. Other illustrious participants were Enrico Fermi (1901-1954), half of the Fermi-Dirac statistics, and Richard Feynman (1918-1988), the Nobel prize-winning MIT “Giant” of theoretical Physics for his work in QED. Richard by the way, was given the role of “number cruncher”, no mean achievement when one sees the list of Physicists present.
It is a who’s-who of Physics comparable to the group assembled at the 5th Solvay conference, which included Albert Einstein (1879-1955), Niels Bohr (1885-1962) and the two-time Nobel Laureate Marie Curie (1867-1934), amongst others.
The ‘Trivial’ Equation
Ramanujan worked with G.H. Hardy (1887-1947), I often relay a little anecdote about him to my students at UCL that my late PhD supervisor told me (may he rest in peace). It goes something like this:
Hardy (the great Trinity College Pure Mathematician) and author of A Mathematician’s Apology, which I highly recommend, walks into the lecture theatre at Trinity and writes an equation on the board. Hardy looks at the equation intensely and scratches his head, addressing the class, “This equation is trivial.” he looks at the equation again, rather worried and perplexed, then stares at the students and then stares back at the equation and then back to the students getting concerned about his claim. He then storms out of the lecture room to his office to verify the proof. He returns 45 minutes later with the immortal words, “Yes, it is trivial”.
Srinivasa Defied Limits
Returning to Srinivasa, there is so much one could write about him, but I will consider one example: he was shown how to solve cubic equations in 1902 and then went on to develop his method to solve the quartic, of course, he tried to develop methods for solving the general quintic by radicals but as we all no doubt know this was shown not to be invertible by the revolutionary renegade Evariste Galois (1811-1832).
The Profound Impact of Ramanujan
Hardy described his association with Ramanujan as the most prolific of his life. Ramanujan’s masterpiece can be found in the Wren digital library today, comparable to Newton’s Principia (which I have in my office at UCL given to me by one of my students) or Euclid’s Elements, which I have at home or Gauss’ Disquisitiones Arithmeticae which again I have at home. What is wonderful about these little posts is that one can drift off onto so many tangents and still find a “turning point” and return to the main protagonist of the discussion.
