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

The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan by Robert Kanigel
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What a brilliant man! This phrase keeps repeating in one's head as one reads the book. There is no place where this does not echo.

While the world thinks that Indians are great at Mathematics, it needs to be admitted that the contribution of India to Mathematics after discovering zero in 5th Century AD is truly zero. Srinivas Ramanujan, one would say has been an oddity and his contribution to pure Mathematics is immense. Thanks to G. H. Hardy that his discoveries saw the light of the day. Had it not been for him, Ramanujan would have remained a clerk in any of the governmental departments and his discoveries would have disappeared along with him.

His discoveries, or probably inspirations would probably be a better word still, impress the Mathematicians even after nearly a century of his having passed away. The book is about his journey to stardom from nothingness that he had to endure in India. He just wrote out equations out of thin air, no proof, not reasoning, just equations. Mathematicians after him, including Hardy and Littlewood have had to work hard to prove his equations and conclusions. A very minuscule of them have not stood the test of proof.

The one reason he succeeded could be because he never got interested in that academics that the Britishers had imposed on the Indians. This education as Lord Macaulay had famously said was good enough to generate clerks for the British Empire to administer India. We have successfully continued this and continue to produce clerks. We will never get another Ramanujan unless we break out of it.

That was beside the point. The book is the outcome of in depth research by the author about all aspects of Ramanujan's life. The author pieces together information from a multitude of sources (see the reference section, it is huge) and has built a coherent history of his life. The book covers the period from his birth to his death and a little beyond. The book also mentions the key discoveries like the equations in infinite series, the mock theta function, the partition formula etc.

One sore cliche points that stands out is that, maybe things would have been different if Ramanujan's mother had not stopped his wife, Janaki, from going to England. If she had Ramanujan may have been better looked after and would have had more time generation equations instead of stirring vegetables and curry in pots and it is likely that he may not have fallen sick under the ministrations of his wife. Maybe we would have had a Ramanujan Junior to carry on the legacy as well.

A fantastic read. Do not miss it.

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