alt.fan.jai-maharaj@googlegroups.com (Dr. Jai Maharaj): Apr 30 06:14PM
Mathematicians And 'The Man Who Knew Infinity'
By Ramin Skibba, Contributor
Inside Science
insidescience.org
Friday, April 29, 2016
[Caption] Real portraits of the main characters from the
new film "The Man Who Knew Infinity," Srinivasa Ramanujan
(left) and G.H. Hardy (right).
A new movie tells the story of an underdog Indian
mathematician.
(Inside Science) - In 1914, an unknown Indian man boarded
a ship and traveled across the world to Cambridge
University in England, where he could finally follow his
passion for mathematics. In the few short years between
his arrival and untimely death, he filled notebooks with
formulas and discovered theorems, some of which still
influence the work of mathematicians and scientists
today.
The new biopic, "The Man Who Knew Infinity," which opens
in U.S. theaters beginning Friday, April 29, chronicles
the life of Srinivasa Ramanujan. A self-taught Indian
mathematician from the city then called Madras (now
Chennai), Ramanujan struggled to overcome racism,
poverty, and outsider status in imperial Britain during
the tumultuous time of World War I. But he eventually won
over the mathematical community and was the second Indian
to become a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Written and directed by Matthew Brown, the film gives an
authentic portrayal of how mathematicians actually work.
At Cambridge, Ramanujan, began an unlikely partnership
with G. H. Hardy, who quickly recognized his impressive,
if untrained, mathematical abilities. Hardy later
described their collaboration as "the one romantic
incident in my life."
Dev Patel and Jeremy Irons play Ramanujan and Hardy,
respectively. The mathematicians had to bridge many
cultural divides. A steadfast atheist, Hardy persistently
placed an emphasis on reason, logic, and the "pristine
proofs of the Western mathematical tradition," as Robert
Kanigel's 1991 biography puts it. Ramanujan, in contrast,
relied on intuition and imagination, turning math into an
art with his love of form and elegance. In the movie, he
tells Hardy that the Hindu goddess Namagiri writes the
formulas on his tongue each night.
"Mathematics used to be an individual sport, but Hardy
and Ramanujan taught us how much you can accomplish with
collaboration," said Princeton mathematician Manjul
Bhargava. He and other mathematicians, actors, and the
director spoke at a post-screening event at the San
Francisco International Film Festival.
Their rare and at times fraught collaboration makes for
an entertaining film. This is in spite its sprinkling in
bits of math throughout, which some viewers might find
daunting. For example, upon hearing about a taxi's number
1729, Ramanujan pointed out that that it's the smallest
number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two
different ways (1 cubed plus 12 cubed and 6 cubed plus 10
cubed).
Continues at:
https://www.insidescience.org/content/mathematicians-and-man-who-knew-infinity/3926
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
http://bit.do/jaimaharaj
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