Customer Reviews

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

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The life of Srinivasa Ramanujan Iyengar is truly the most amazing in all of science. A transcendent mathematical genius, he was both amazingly lucky and the victim of incredible misfortune. Quite possibly the greatest mathematical talent the world has ever known, his discoveries still astound and baffle those who read them.
Born to a poor, upper caste Brahmin family in the area near Madras in southern India, he was self-taught in mathematics and failed all other subjects. Only the kind patronage of those who recognized, but did not understand his talents kept him afloat in his early years.
After a few years of work as a clerk, he was the recipient of an amazing stroke of luck. An unsolicited letter with a few of his results was sent to some of the highest ranking mathematicians in England. G. H. Hardy chose to read it and after serious thought decided to respond. As Kanigel accurately relates, this was astonishing.
The idea that an upper class Englishman would read and take seriously a letter from an uneducated "native" in one of the far reaches of the empire wa almost unthinkable. The author spends a great deal of time explaining Hardy's unorthodox nature. While lengthy, it is necessary to explain why Hardy took the trouble to read the letter and respond.
Kanigel also does an excellent job in describing the culture shock that Ramanujan encountered, although one suspects that he faced a bit more racism than is mentioned. While experiencing some difficulty, the British empire wa still near the height of its power, and certainly many of those in the British Isles looked down upon their "subject peoples."
All of the human interest aspects of the Hardy-Ramanujan collaboration are told in great detail. Hardy had the greatest respect for Ramanujan the matematician, once creating a rising scale of their mathematical ability that assigned the scores

G. H. Hardy    25
H. E. Littlewood   30
David Hilbert    80
S. Ramanujan    100

certainly placing Ramanujan among the best of all time. However, Hardy was totally uninterested in Ramanujan the man and recent immigrant. At no time did Hardy ever express interest in Ramanujan's life and family in southern India.
The final chapters deal with the fate of Ramanujan's work after he died. Some of it was stored away and only recently "rediscovered" and presented to the world, another amazing chapter in the life of an amazing man.
This book is a superb account of the life and times of a man whose work and insights were so incredible that no one person really understands them all. This is one of the best mathematical biographies that I have ever read.

Published in Mathematics and Computer Education, reprinted with permission.

Im not too fond of biographies, but I would give this book an exception.

The life of Ramanujan is amazing and one is pushed to only awe the limits of mind. Being an Indian, I can see Robert Kanigel has given a comprehensive treatment to all facets of the life of Ramanujan - his boyhood days in small town of Kumbakonam, his obsession with Maths, his seperation from Mother and his wife, his relationship with Hardy and others, his stay in London, and his final days. Kanigel has really done a wonderful job in depicting the Brahmin house-hold of the early 1900s. One could really imagine Ramanujan with a tuft and a religious symbol on forehead, but his mind calculating 10,000 th decimal of pi.

His purely professional relations with Hardy has also been very deftly depicted. How hard the days must have been! Being a Ramanujan's biography its hard to avoid mathematical formulas - and the author justifiably includes them when necessary. But even if you do not understand them - you can just wonder at the string of symbols joined together to purport some meaning.

The narration is truly captivating. It sends an horripulating feeling to the mind, when Hardy describes the first letter of formulas as "These must be true. If they are not, nobody would have the audacity to invent it."

The final days of Ramanujan are indeed sad and emotional and also beautifuly captured in the book. Typical is the life of geniuses - the world has hard time understanding them. This book is really worth in my library.

Kanigel's is the first book I've read on Ramanujan. It is well put together and explores the elements of the man, South India and Cambridge that led to the "collaboration" which allowed Ramanujan to flourish and be "discovered" by the West. Mathematics and Science is Planetary in scope, whereas cultures and colonialism, idiosyncracies of Universities, constraints of poverty, all in some way deny us the fruits of genius, whom I daresay are "normally" distributed in all populations! Nurture, in the true and fullest sense of the word, allows the light to shine through. Ramanujan's letter to Hardy is a classic! It is the essence of understatement, he may have been uneducated in the purely formal sense, but he was quite aware of the world he was to be reluctantly invited to join. His gifts are rare, his powers abundantly evident, there is no use debating how much longer he may have lived, if both he and Hardy understood the difficulties of a South Indian clerk attempting to live in Cambridge. The collaboration brings into sharp relief, the genarally accepted notion that in most endeavours of man, critical mass, or an informed bouncing wall/mirror brings out the best. Does Hingis give of her best against a weak opponent? Doesn't Michael Jordon reach deep when there is half a minute and five points to score? Would Karpov have ramped up his game had Fischer allowed him a match? Ramanujan may have contributed much more had he survived even two more Summers. As it stands his contribution is so outstanding that his notebooks still give up useful gems to knowledge-hungry post-graduate students. Kanigel's book is a must read for anyone interested in the history of Mathematics, anyone interested in harnessing the powers of genius, the relationships among nature and nurture, genes and culture etc. Good companion reading would include the lives of Richard Feynman, John Maynard Keynes and anything on the Manhattan Project to name but a few.

In each field of science there are many unsung heroes whose stories are all but forgotten. Nevertheless some of these stories are astonishing and in the hands of a good author makes fscinating reading.
One such story is that of Ramanujan, who was to Math what Mozart was to music. His genius was almost mystical. This book deals with his life, how came to the attention of Hardy, went to England and became one of the well known mathematicians of his time.
But this book also deals with the "mystical" aspects of his genius. Strange, almost unbelievable anecdotes of how from the esoteric shadows of the east came an almost uneducated man who, isolated from the scientific world, rediscovered many of the great mathematical theorems that had been dsicovered over centuries in Europe.
The book is written in a superb style. I really enjoyed reading it, and I urge everyone to read it for its sheer entertainment value

Kanigel offers a very "American" interpretation of both Ramanujan's Indian life and the U.K. university life he briefly led w/ G.H. Hardy at Cambridge.

The first 150 pages give exceptional detail into R's life outside Chennai (Madras) and how Hinduism permeated his entire existence. This section is outstanding. No assumptions are made and many details of Hinduism as it impacts daily life (and therefore Ramanujan's decisions) are expanded upon in great detail.

However, once the author turns his attention to the U.K. and the public school/univeristy system, there is a lengthy prurient discussion of Hardy's sexuality, among other things. It is tedious and distracting.

Finally there is little if any discussion of the mathematical concepts on which Ramanujan worked. The details, spelled out for a layman.

Kanigel clearly heeded every editor's warning, "For every equation in a book, sales drop by half". There is no explanation of mathematical notation so that it can be used later in the book to explain other ideas. This was extremely dissappointing. When reading biographies or Euler, Riemann etc, you expect some fairly detailed mathematics. Not in this book!

In short, this could have been a 200 page book, but was padded for reasons I still cannot quite figure out.

Robert Kanigel's biography of Srinivasa Ramanujam is a fascinating read. Having come from Kumbakonam and having studied in Town High School, I was naturally interested in the life of the school's greatest prodigy. The book is excellently researched and goes through all aspects of his life. It shows the early part of his life and his relationship with his mother and what started him on his mathematical life. No one can understand the depths of his mind, but this book does show some insight into it. It also shows the trouble any person may have in those days in breaking the mold in India, especially coming from such a rural background. The book does give insight into his quick insight and creativity, though he was wrong at times, he had amazing accuracy most of the times. For sheer mathematical ability, he was one of the best of the last century, as is acknowledged by most mathematical authorities. He excelled at solving problems and at inventing new areas, his work done in the last days of his life, "mock theta functions" is the proof for this.

In Hardy, Ramanujam found a mentor who was totally without prejudice. This book is useful only for the lay people though, it does not go into the mathematical aspects of his life. It does not go enough into his discoveries and how they made a difference. For instance, even now, his mechanism forms the background for the fastest algorithm for finding the value of Pi. While this is an excellent biography for someone in high school and is inspirational, it is not of much use to the mathematically minded. I wish that they come out with a Springer version of the biography similar to the ones they have for Riemann and others that delve into the life and the mathematics of the person.

The sad news is that while Ramanujam is a great person, he is largely forgotten in his home town and his country. India may have improved in many ways but the Ramanujam journal has contributions mainly from mathematicians in US and Japan. I went to Kumbakonam and it saddens me that no one there remembers one of the greatest products of that city. Even in colleges, he is not remembered by anyone except a select few. While Fields medal winners remember him, his own country people have largely forgotten him. I hope that this situation changes and that such books are read by enough youngsters from India and make contributions to the area of mathematics. One important thing that is relevant from the book is the Tripos system. While it was removed in England, such a system is used to judge people to get them into the IITs in India. I frankly feel that the same logic against the tripos system can be used against the entrace exams of the IITs.

I am not a math whiz. I am not even South Asian. But I loved this book. The story is very compelling, and the math is approachable (I even found myself doodling little formulae, like how to derive the area of a circle...). If you're interested in the story of a very unique man, this is a good place to start.

It is interesting to note that much of the work of Ramanujan is still not understood, and it might be another 100 years before we could even begin to unravel the way he thought. A superb proof of the power of one mind, and a warning to everyone to take care not to summarily discard that which we do not understand.

A superb book. It will appeal to anyone interested in the triumph of excellence over great obstacles. No math background is needed to read this book.

This is a captivating, illuminating, and deeply moving biography of the Indian mathematical genius S. Ramanujan. Genius is always enigmatic, and mathematical genius doubly so to the general reader for whom math will always be a closed book. One of the extraordinary things about this biography is Kanigel's gift for mathematical exposition at the layman level. As a mathematician myself, I can only say I've never seen its equal. Although to some extent he is helped by the "elementary" nature of much of R.'s work -- its gist can be grasped with only a basic understanding of calculus -- the task is still daunting. Yet everything is clearly and correctly explained, freshly, succinctly, memorably.

Kanigel's book is equally rich in human terms, too. His portrait of R. shows not only a genius but also a simple, spontaneous, likeable man. R. must have been the world's worst math tutor -- one shudders at the thought -- yet people liked him. This was a crucial factor in R.'s getting the opportunity to bring his gifts to full flower, for heaven and earth had to be moved. It's sad to think of the other Ramanujans in India and elsewhere who, crushed by life's hardships, were never able to develop or perhaps even recognize their gifts.

I take issue with the previous reviewer concerning Kanigel's treatment of Hardy. Hardy is a complex and fascinating figure in his own right and his personality needs to be explored in the context of his relationship with R. His homosexuality was a part of the constellation and a factor in his championing of the underdog (including women in mathematics), his openness to the unorthodox, and his willingness to take risks. Although bound by their common love for mathematics, the two men were otherwise poles apart both temperamentally and culturally. This contrast adds further interest and poignancy to the already romantic, Cinderella-like story of R.'s brief life in this world, and Mr. Kanigel makes the most of it.

Urgently recommended!

While an interesting story, what really separates this book from the pack is its probing look at how much we can learn drawing only from the universe, versus sitting in class and having someone tell us what they have been told is known. Ramanujin operating in a social vacuum experienced tremendous sucesses and tremendous failures. He reinvented theorems that were known 100 years earlier, because he did not attend universities that would have saved him such work. On the other side of the equation, he tackled problems sometimes, from a completely unique perspective, having not had his way of thinking "institutionalized" by those same universities. This is the lesson that hits home in this book. Both types of learning are important. Both create stumbling blocks to higher levels of discovery. It seems to me that this is probably true of every discipline to which we have given a name.