Mathemagician

England had Newton, France had Cauchy, Switzerland had Euler and Bernoulli, even Prussia had Jacobi. Who did India have? God answered this question with Srinivasa Ramanujan. After all the land that produced Aryabhatta and Bhaskaracharya and gave birth to Zero needed someone to represent its achievement in modern mathematics.

There is no necessity to talk about this genius’ contribution to mathematics in the fields of elliptic functions, number theory and “mock” theta functions. The world knows it. What is more important is to understand a bit about the man himself. I wanted to share what I learnt from reading the life of this great human being.

First, Ramanujan, like many other great men who are a part of the “rags-to-riches” league, has set in me a great source of inspiration. At a point of time when he failed miserably in his BA and did not have the capability to eat one proper meal a day, he did not lose hope. Instead worked hard on his skills (mathematics) and went around hawking his wares like a salesman, desperately trying for a break. Then when the break came in the form of GH Hardy, the English mathematician, there was nothing stopping Ramanujan. He would go on to reach the pinnacle of success, bringing pride and glory to the whole nation.

Second and the most interesting thing about this man was his character. Amidst all the adulation, he would be unruffled. His innocent self, always humble. His faith in the almighty was unshakeable. Even when he was almost in his deathbed in England with TB, due to lack of proper food and overworking, he would not touch meat. He chose death over forgoing his principles. Never once he failed to perform the rituals as a Brahmin every morning. A man, who wanted to live by his principles, proving the fact that adversity is the touchstone of character.

It is interesting to note his connection with Hardy. Hardy was a man who was a pure atheist in every sense of the word. He was a rational man and had his own reasons, not out of frustration like many atheists, but “scientific” reasons he thought fit. The Hardy-Ramanujan team was like a blind man and a man without legs. Both depended on the other for the path-breaking discoveries they made. These equations- a result of an atheist and a staunch believer would be called my Ramanujan as “an equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of god”. As they say, truly, mysterious are the ways of god!

We know Cauchy was a man who, forever tried to convert other mathematicians to Roman Catholicism. As few would say he tried mystical methods of representing god in mathematics. Ramanujan would do that for Hinduism. For example, Ramanujan would tell his friend the expression (2^n)-1 represented primordial god and several divinities. When n is replaced by 0, the result is 0. 0- representing nothingness, or as Hindu religion perceives “Parabrahmam”. Now when n is replaced with 1, the result is 1. 1- representing singularity or ekam- the core of Advaita Vedanta. When n=2, the expression results in 3, denoting trinity; when n=3, the expression results in 7, denoting the Saptarishis and so on.

If a man, who struggled to get a day’s meal could rise up to be the face of the nation with postal stamps printed in his honour, would never once in his life give up his principles and faith in god for any reason, would prove to the world what a meek south Indian’s capabilities were, then that man would be my source of inspiration. Srinivasa Ramanujan- not just a great mathematician, but the man, who really knew infinity!