The man who knew infinity

Marina9

The Living Force
FOTCM Member
Well done movie!

I watched it via a internet TV/movies program (I've researched it and there are no legal issues for people to use it) called "freetelly" for windows. There is also versions for other operating systems on tvaddons.ag . They host the movies on servers all over the world, and you stream from it.

It was amazing how he was intuitive about it so he couldn't use the traditional methods. Sometimes it seems like formal education forces a way of thinking which creates a tunnel vision.

Ramanujan had no degree, no formal education, just a love for numbers.

From the subtitles file one of my favorite quotes:
Ramanujan:
An equation has no meaning to me
unless it expresses a thought of God.


Hardy:
Maybe it is better
that we just remain what we were.
When I was at school, I remember one of my chaplains saying,
"You know God exists because He's like a kite,
"and you can feel the tug on the string and know that He's up there."
I said, "What if there's no wind and the kite can't fly?"
No, I... I can't believe in God.
I don't believe in the immemorial wisdom of the East,
but I do believe in you.

I see that he probably saw the true "god" not in a personified religious sense, but in "nature" which includes mathematics which is a representation of the foundation of this reality.
 
I watched this movie a few months back, and really enjoyed it. How nice it is to see a movie with no sex or violence! His capacity for mathematics was amazing, given that he was an autodidact with no formal academic training (perhaps this explains his brilliance :P )

[quote from G H Hardy, his mentor]
He could remember the idiosyncrasies of numbers in an almost uncanny way. It was Littlewood who said that every positive integer was one of Ramanujan's personal friends. I remember once going to see him when he was ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavorable omen. "No," he replied, "it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways."[/quote]

I recall the Cs mentioning that Maths was a universal language, and have referenced maths and prime numbers in older sessions.

All in all a brilliant movie.



SPOILER ALERT (don't read if you don't want to know the ending)


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The tragedy was him dying so young. I have to wonder whether it was his diet (vegetarian) and perhaps the cold climate of England, that ultimately caused his ill health (contracting TB) and death.
 
This movie is excellent, IMO. Very well done!

Divide By Zero said:
It was amazing how he was intuitive about it so he couldn't use the traditional methods. Sometimes it seems like formal education forces a way of thinking which creates a tunnel vision.

Ramanujan had no degree, no formal education, just a love for numbers.

Yes, it was amazing how he was conducted by intuition, truly beautiful to see and intriguing as well. I mean, how there are people like him that have such a connection to numbers, music, etc...? It's amazing!

I think though that balance IS good here. The work done together with Hardy was very important, IMO. Yes, formal education can force us into a tunnel vision, but it can also give tools by which to understand our intuition better and in more practical levels, breaking it down and analyzing it. I think that it is super important to develop intuition, divergent thinking, etc, but it is also important to use our other faculties that are developed by tools such as traditional methods used as a common language in maths, music and language, for instance.

Divide By Zero said:
From the subtitles file one of my favorite quotes:
Ramanujan:
An equation has no meaning to me
unless it expresses a thought of God.


Hardy:
Maybe it is better
that we just remain what we were.
When I was at school, I remember one of my chaplains saying,
"You know God exists because He's like a kite,
"and you can feel the tug on the string and know that He's up there."
I said, "What if there's no wind and the kite can't fly?"
No, I... I can't believe in God.
I don't believe in the immemorial wisdom of the East,
but I do believe in you.

I see that he probably saw the true "god" not in a personified religious sense, but in "nature" which includes mathematics which is a representation of the foundation of this reality.

Beautiful quote!
 
Arwenn said:
I watched this movie a few months back, and really enjoyed it. How nice it is to see a movie with no sex or violence! His capacity for mathematics was amazing, given that he was an autodidact with no formal academic training (perhaps this explains his brilliance :P )

The tragedy was him dying so young. I have to wonder whether it was his diet (vegetarian) and perhaps the cold climate of England, that ultimately caused his ill health (contracting TB) and death.

Yes! It's hard to find movies like this nowadays hehe. Today I was reading an article in Spanish saying how some people are born with this math intelligence and sometimes a lot of mathematicians are musicians too, no wonder why, since music is purely maths. Not sure how accurate this is, but in past schools i've found some cases like this.

Well music and maths is another topic but i've found this interesting:

The link between the physical practice of music and strong mathematical abilities are demonstrated in studies that show that kids who play a musical instrument can perform more complex arithmetical operations than those who do not play an instrument.

http://www.vancouversun.com/Entertainment/interesting+connection+between+math+music/1473881/story.html

What you mentioned above about his diet, made me think about the death rates in India, and the possible connection to vegetarian diet. Also made me think that they eat a lot of fat, ghee is like water for them, so im guessing this may help them too - just some thoughts. Death rate apparently seems to be decreasing:

http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=in&v=26

But then again, the diet, and all the super cold weather was not a good thing for him, plus I can imagine there was loads of stress involved too.. Here's an interesting article I found about what could have possibly happened to him leading to his death:

https://todayinsci.com/R/Ramanujan_Srinivasa/RamanujanSrinivasa-IllnessMystery.htm
 
Thank you for this.

My first year (university) calculus Professor was the first one who exposed me (maybe us, i.e. the whole class) to Ramanujan.

He taught us well; and directed us to absolutely have a healthy disdain for the "machinery" of education.

He printed his own textbook, we had to pay, of course, but it was $10 versus the $150 for usual course text. Everything was covered.

Interspersed in the text book were vignettes that challenged you to think about your perception of what you thought you knew.

To this day, 27 years later, I still have that text book in my shelves.

On the cover and in between the lessons, or part of the lessons (if you listened to what he said and noticed the riddles in the text, and tried to figure it out), appeared Ramanujan.

<3
 
Thanks for the nod on the film. I would very much recommend reading the book about him if you can first, as it is a rich story of Ramanujan's placement from within the Indian cast system, his notice, the resistance by some in England of considering him as a student (think this continued once he was there by a few who, as academics, felt threatened by him) and those who supported him. It offers up some interesting mathematical discussion among those who were with him then and how he worked mathematics in his mind - like a dance of knowing. It detailed his illness and (correctly said, Arwenn) the cold influences of England upon him.

https://www.amazon.ca/Man-Who-Knew-Infinity-Ramanujan/dp/0671750615/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1481405273&sr=8-3&keywords=man+who+knew
 
It is a fortune that he was not brainwashed by the academy in his early life. For me it was a natural, powerful channel of this abstract world of numbers (As he stated, Goddess reveals to him numeric information in dreams) and as happens in many of cases like his, the suffering was a trigger that made possible that connection .

From the point of view of the control system, powerful genius can be a threat, especially if in the future theirs discoveries can be used to free us and maybe this is related to his premature death.
 
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