The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan

Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 1991

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapter 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 5 Summary: “I Beg to Introduce Myself…(1913-1914)”

The Letter

Kanigel details the contents of Ramanujan’s first letter to Hardy: a humble introduction followed by some nine pages of his formulas and theorems. Like many in India, Hardy did not know what to make of Ramanujan at first, and he sought the advice of his close associates, among them John Littlewood, a notable mathematician in his own right. Kanigel detours briefly to provide a backstory on Littlewood before returning to the letter. After much analysis of Ramanujan’s math, some of which Kanigel outlines and describes in this section, Hardy and Littlewood agreed that Ramanujan possessed a great, albeit unorthodoxly presented, gift for mathematics. Unlike the previous two Trinity fellows, Baker and Hobson, whom Ramanujan had initially contacted, Hardy was open to the possibility that he had discovered a diamond in the rough. Kanigel attributes this open-mindedness to Hardy’s middle-class education.

“I Have Found in You a Friend…”

Hardy showed Ramanujan’s first letter around Cambridge, and it caused quite a sensation. Kanigel breaks down Hardy’s response to Ramanujan, in which he compliments Ramanujan but challenges him to provide proofs for his theorems. Thus began a correspondence between the two men; Hardy would eventually offer Ramanujan acceptance into Cambridge. However, Hardy’s praise of Ramanujan also helped validate him in India, which meant that his career began taking off there.

“Does Ramanujan Know Polish?”

Ramanujan was now bringing home 75 rupees a month instead of 25, and this allowed him some measure of financial independence, which for Ramanujan meant more time exclusively devoted to work in mathematics. Meanwhile, the correspondence with Hardy continued, with Hardy consistently asking for proofs of the work and Ramanujan subtly dancing around the requests. Ramanujan’s reputation in Madras also grew; he was no longer some relative unknown. Instead, because of his relationship to Cambridge, a legacy started to grow up around him.

A Dream at Namakkal

The correspondence between Hardy and Ramanujan slowed down, though Hardy did put him in contact with E. H. Neville, who was in Madras at the time and who would later become one of Ramanujan’s trusted friends while in England. Kanigel describes Ramanujan’s reluctance at taking Hardy up on the offer to move to England and attend Cambridge. Because Ramanujan was a Brahmin, his faith essentially prevented him from leaving his home in India. Eventually, his friend Narayana Iyer and others began making reasonable justifications to Ramanujan for going to England. Much of the second part of this section describes Ramanujan’s account of his change of heart, which involves divine inspiration. While visiting the Namakkal temple with Narayana Iyer, Ramanujan claimed that he saw the goddess Namagiri, which he interpreted as a sign that he could leave India and pursue his mathematical ambitions at Cambridge.

At the Dock

After his trip to Namakkal, Ramanujan made up his mind that he would move to England and join Hardy at Cambridge. Travel arrangements were made, and by March 1914, Ramanujan would begin a journey that would take nearly a month to complete. In the lead-up to his departure, Ramanujan was not visibly excited and seemed to dread parting from his mother, his friends, his wife Janaki, and the only way of life he had ever known. After receiving a quick makeover, which included the purchase of Western clothing and a new haircut that removed his katumi (a knot of hair on the back of his head to indicate his Brahmin caste), Ramanujan boarded the steamship Nevassa. As he departed India, Ramanujan wept.

Chapter 5 Analysis

The central question at the heart of Hardy’s initial response to Ramanujan’s letter and the theorems therein is expressed as follows: “Were they wild and unimaginable because they were silly, or trivial, or just plain wrong with nothing to support them? Or because they were the work of some rare flower of exotic genius?” (162). The nature of Ramanujan’s work, as Kanigel explored in previous chapters, was that it went beyond the comprehension of most people. To Hardy, an exceedingly skilled mathematician, Ramanujan’s work was so unorthodox that he could not initially make sense of it. For Hardy to formally reply to Ramanujan involved a full immersion into trying to answer the central question mentioned above. That Hardy would do so speaks positively of his character. What others, including his colleagues Baker and Hobson, definitively dismissed, Hardy did not. Instead, his open-mindedness allowed him to consider Ramanujan’s work as possibly authentic until he proved otherwise. In making a dispositive inquiry into Ramanujan’s work, he ultimately discovered that it was authentic.

One of the book’s underlying themes is the way religion shaped Ramanujan’s worldview. He sought divine guidance wherever and whenever he could. That a man of such astounding faculties of reason was ultimately convinced to travel to England by visions of deities seems contradictory. As the more eminent people of Madras at the time began to collectively urge Ramanujan to accept the offer to join Hardy at Cambridge, he was still reluctant because of his religious beliefs. Brahmins were discouraged from such endeavors. The trip to the temple at Namakkal triggered the change in Ramanujan’s perspective. According to Kanigel, “permission for Ramanujan to go came personally through the intervention of the goddess Namagiri, residing in her shrine at Namakkal” (188). An atheist like Hardy would probably have considered this episode nonsense; however, it demonstrates how Ramanujan contextualized life. He believed that his mathematical skills were gifts from god, and whether this was true is not the point. The anecdote of Namakkal shows how Ramanujan was a fusion of two seemingly opposing worldviews: the rationalist person of science and the person of committed faith. In Ramanujan we see that these worldviews are not necessarily binary opposites. His was not an either/or way of looking at life; it was both/and.