Ramanujan biography video on george washington

Robert Kanigel is the author of nine previous books, most recently "Hearing Homer's Song: The Brief Life and Big Idea of Milman Parry." His "Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs" was long-listed for the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medal for nonfiction and named an NPR best book of the year. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim fellowship, the Grady-Stack Award for science writing and, for his Milman Parry biography, a Public Scholar grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. His book "The Man Who Knew Infinity" was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and named a New York Public Library "Book to Remember"; it has been translated into more than a dozen languages, and was the basis for the film of the same name starring Jeremy Irons and Dev Patel. .Kanigel and his wife, the poet S. B. Merrow, live in Baltimore. His first memoir, "Young Man, Muddled," was published in late 2022. [robertkanigel.com]

Transfixed by Math at Age 15!

Srinivasa Ramanujan was an acclaimed Indian mathematician who was born in southern India in 1887.  Growing up, he attended a local grammar school and high school, fostering an interest in mathematics from a very early age.  At age 15, Ramanujan read an old math book titled A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics cover to cover, and was transfixed.  He perused all of the theorems outlined in the book and began writing some of his own. 

One-Track Mind

Ramanujan received scholarships to both the Government College in India and the University of Madras, but upon attending, lost both due to his tendency to focus on his math classes and neglect all others.  Regardless, he continued his pursuit of math and published a 17-page paper on Bernoulli numbers in the Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society in 1911. 

Studying at Cambridge

In 1913, Ramanujan began writing to G. H. Hardy, a British mathematician.  Hardy was impressed with Ramanujan’s ideas and got him both a research scholarship at the University of Madras and a grant from Cambridge University.  In 1914, Hardy asked Ramanujan to come study under him at Cambridge.  This request spurred a five-year mentorship between Hardy and Ramanujan; during that time, Ramanujan published over 20 papers individually and countless more in collaboration with Hardy.  He received a bachelor of sciences for research in 1916 and became part of the Royal Society of London in 1918. 

Advanced Mathematic Discoveries

One of Ramanujan’s goals was to find an exact formula for integer partitions of n— in other words, a formula to determine the exact number of ways we can add up to a number using positive integers.  For example, we can add up to 3 using 1+1+1 and 1+2, so the number 3 has two partitions.  Ramanujan and Hardy found and published this exact formula in 1918; Ramanujan also helped to develop the theory of