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

Robert Kanigel

  • 4.04 out of 5 stars
    8,953 ratings by Goodreads
 
9780349104522: The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan

Synopsis

In 1913, a young unschooled Indian clerk wrote a letter to G H Hardy, begging the pre-eminent English mathematician's opinion on several ideas he had about numbers. Realising the letter was the work of a genius, Hardy arranged for Srinivasa Ramanujan to come to England. Thus began one of the most improbable and productive collaborations ever chronicled. With a passion for rich and evocative detail, Robert Kanigel takes us from the temples and slums of Madras to the courts and chapels of Cambridge University, where the devout Hindu Ramanujan, 'the Prince of Intuition,' tested his brilliant theories alongside the sophisticated and eccentric Hardy, 'the Apostle of Proof'. In time, Ramanujan's creative intensity took its toll: he died at the age of thirty-two and left behind a magical and inspired legacy that is still being plumbed for its secrets today.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author

Robert Kanigel is the author of six other books, including The Man Who Knew Infinity. After 13 years as professor of science writing at MIT, he has returned to full-time writing in Baltimore.

From Publishers Weekly

This moving and astonishing biography tells the improbable story of India-born Srinavasa Ramanujan Iyengar, self-taught mathematical prodigy. In 1913 Ramanujan, a 25-year-old clerk who had flunked out of two colleges, wrote a letter filled with startlingly original theorems to eminent English mathematician G. H. Hardy. Struck by the Indian's genius, Hardy, member of the Cambridge Apostles and an obsessive cricket aficionado, brought Ramanujan to England. Over the next five years, the vegetarian Brahmin who claimed his discoveries were revealed to him by a Hindu goddess turned out influential mathematical propositions. Cut off from his young Indian wife left at home and emotionally neglected by fatherly yet aloof Hardy, Ramanujan returned to India in 1919, depressed, sullen and quarrelsome; he died one year later of tuberculosis. Kanigel ( Apprentice to Genius ) gives nontechnical readers the flavor of how Ramanujan arrived at his mathematical ideas, which are used today in cosmology and computer science. BOMC featured alternate; QPB alternate.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780543497857: The Man Who Knew Infinity (English)(Paperback)

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  0543497852 ISBN 13:  9780543497857
Publisher: Generic, 1992
Softcover