The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan. This item is unavailable.The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan

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A moving and enlightening look at the unbelievable true story of how gifted prodigy Ramanujan stunned the scholars of Cambridge University and revolutionized mathematics.

In 1913, a young unschooled Indian clerk wrote a letter to G H Hardy, begging the preeminent English mathematician's opinion on several ideas he had about numbers. Realizing 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, but left behind a magical and inspired legacy that is still being plumbed for its secrets today.

Robert Kanigel is the author of The Man Who Knew Infinity, Eyes on the Street, The One Best Way, Hearing Homer’s Song, and six other nonfiction books—in biography, history, history of science, and memoir. He has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and a recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar award as well as a Guggenheim fellowship. He spent earlier lives as a mechanical engineer, a professor of science writing at MIT, and a freelance writer of magazine articles, essays, and reviews. An avid cyclist and amateur mosaicist, he lives in Baltimore.