The Incredible Life Of Ramanujan
All about the genius in 5 minutes
Hello there,
Every once in a while, the world is lucky to witness the arrival of a genius who stretches the bounds of what’s possible.
One such genius landed in South India at the turn of the 20th Century.
He was an ordinary TamBrahm, born in a poor family, in an obscure village.
Millions shared such starting conditions, and typically nothing remarkable came of them.
But every once in a while, we witness freak events that make their way to the pages of history.
That’s what happened when the world witnessed the entry of a quirky, curious little human. His name was Srinivas Ramanujan, and his life was full of wonders, discoveries, and lessons for readers analyzing it a century later.
Here’s the genius mathematician’s life story summarised for readers who don’t (or can’t) want to read a full biography:
Poor Background: Considering what this genius achieved, it’s shocking that he was born into an impoverished family in a town called Erode. The family of Brahmins barely got by, and often it’d be a struggle even to get 2 square meals a day and feed the little boy. Since the beginning, SR showed a knack for numbers- and nothing else.
Flunking: SR had earned a scholarship which helped him make it to college. But because he was obsessed only with math and paid 0 attention to other subjects, he flunked as hard as those engineering students who inquire about the syllabus 2 hours before the final exam (I’m referring to myself here). His physiology score reached an all-time low of 10% (lol). In an exam, he once wrote “This is the undigested product of the digestion chapter”. Funny shit for sure, but it didn’t help him pass and may have invited the wrath of the teachers even. Thanks to his lack of interest, SR lost his scholarship due to his failure. This was so embarrassing that he ran away and took a train to Vizag. This brings us to an unusual quirk in his personality.
Sorry but this is the only pic that people seem to have Shame: This was a person deeply sensitive to shame, and this running-away scene wasn’t the first one by any means. Once, one of his classmates had scored higher in arithmetic. Accustomed to being the topper in every math exam, this result was mortifying and he stopped talking to the friend. Another time, he was excited that he’d come up with an interesting proof- but when he realized that the result had already been discovered 150 years ago by the mathematician Euler, he was deeply embarrassed.
Misunderstood genius: Kicked out of college twice and only interested in dabbling with numbers, SR sat at home with his notebooks, spending entire days on his weird math. Thankfully, the family didn’t pressure him to look for a job, but his mother soon resorted to that “time-tested Indian psychotherapy” - an arranged marriage. SR was married off to a 10-year-old girl named Janki. A married man, he had no option but to hunt for a source of income now. This led him to write to various people looking for work. He’d send them his notebooks full of what’d later be regarded as breathtakingly original mathematical discoveries because those were his only credentials. But nobody understood the stuff he was coming up with.
Discovery: He went from one person to another, seeking references and begging for something as basic as a clerical position. Thanks to the persistence of various friends like Ramchandra Rao & C Rajagopalachari, he finally started writing to esteemed British mathematicians- nobody in India could tell if his work was that of a crank or a genius. So letters flew off to the West, and 2 rejections already came in. Finally, he wrote to the legendary GH Hardy, who found something in it. He ignored the letter full of theorems at first, but it kept playing on his mind. He then spent hours 3 poring over SR’s work. The conclusion? This truly was the work of a genius- he had never seen anything like this before. SR had to be brought to Cambridge anyhow- if he had done all this work without any formal training, what might he achieve in the company of the finest mathematicians? Hardy pulled various strings to get him the funding, but there was a fly in the ointment.
Crossing the seas: Even though he got a feeling of validation after corresponding with Hardy and finally getting a position as an RA in Madras, SR didn’t immediately jump at the prospect of heading to Cambridge. Recall that this was the early 1900s- a time when crossing the seas was considered to be a major taboo. People were thought to lose their caste if they did so, and society sharply looked down upon this practice. Sometime later, SR and his mother devised what seemed to be a nice solution. The mother had a dream where the goddess Namagiri gave divine approval to the idea of heading westward. Even he traveled to Namakkal and had a similar vision. Armed with godly approval, the stage was set for SR to travel and aim for the skies.
Math Revolution: Once in Cambridge, SR worked non-stop, producing hundreds of theorems, and benefited greatly from Hardy’s guidance. He brought about a revolution in the world of number theory, and as Hardy put it later, this was a poor Hindu boy going up against centuries of accumulated wisdom in the West- and winning. He rediscovered vast amounts of Western math while coming up with a vast number of original contributions that are studied to this day. George Polya, a Hungarian mathematician, once accessed SR’s netbooks and then threw them back at him in a few days. If he got caught up in Ramanujan’s work, he’d chase them lifelong trying to prove his theorems and never discover anything of his own. Such was the depth of SRs work.
Unparalleled genius: SR was an unprecedented genius, by far the best in his era. Hardy compared him to towering figures like Euler and Jacobi and said that he had never seen anyone who came close to him. His contributions led to him becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society, a distinction reserved for the most hallowed figures in the history of math and science. Mark Kac, a renowned mathematician, described his work as magic. While most other mathematicians were ordinary geniuses, SR was more like a magician. If the latter comes up with an idea, another genius can be sure that they’ll also come up with it after some effort. But where the magician’s insights came from, the ordinary genius couldn’t even begin to imagine.
Emotional stressors: Despite the towering achievements, not all was going well. Stripped away from the comfort & love of family and living in a cold, formal, and foreign culture, SR felt deeply lonely. Math took a lot of energy, and the lack of warmth and connection worsened the problem. Due to his strict vegetarianism, he even avoided group lunches with his colleagues (he couldn’t stand pork or mutton around him), leading to even lesser contact with others. His health took a beating, and he spent many years in depressing sanatoriums. Unable to do good work, estranged from his wife (who’d run away from home), and without many friends to act as emotional release valves- he was in a bad spot. Something else may have acted as a trigger one day in this already depressing situation, which led to him attempting suicide. Thankfully he was saved by a guard.
Curtain: Ultimately, even though he recovered, SR was soon approaching his last years. In that period, he made a flurry of discoveries as he achieved a new creative peak. Some believed this to be the last creative burst of a man dying of tuberculosis. Soon, he was brought back to India for recovery but nothing helped. Finally, in April 1920, SR left for heavenly abode at the tender age of 32, having left behind a rich mathematical legacy, and a bittersweet story- for who knows what heights the man may have ascended to had his situation been a little more amenable?
So this was the incredibly inspiring yet saddening tale of one of the greatest mathematicians the country has produced.
The famous geneticist JBS Haldane remarked that the story of Ramanujan was a scathing indictment of the British Raj’s education system- that it had failed to do anything to promote the interests of a budding genius, and had actively consigned him to obscurity via its rigid system.
That is true. The education system was designed to produce the ordinary- not the extraordinary.
But there was a brighter side. As the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Sunrahmanyan Chandrasekhar said, SR’s example was a beacon of hope for the thousands of geniuses who had no avenue to apply their talents- and were probably resigned to the drudgery of making ends meet by doing manual jobs or petty work. If a poor boy from Madras could become a globally renowned figure, so could they.
Moreover, coming in an era when racism reigned supreme, Ramanujan’s example was a death blow to the idea of white supremacy. Thanks to the presence of figures of him and others like CV Raman and Tagore, it proved that India could produce an equal match when compared to the finest minds of the West.
Ramanujan’s story deserves to be told widely. It might just inspire a kid sitting in some obscure town to take the leap and become the next scientific sensation.
Thanks for tuning in. This article is based on the book ‘The Man Who Knew Infinity’. If you enjoyed reading this, you might also want to read:
Such an amazing article. Thanks for sharing.