Edit ∑Gemini
Reference source: Mathematics China
Somewhere,
Somewhere in the world
something incredible is waiting to be known.
Those incredible things are waiting to be discovered
—Carl Sagan
April 26, 1920
Indian mathematics wizard Srinivasa Ramanujan dies at the age of 33
The great mathematician Hardy (G.H. Hardy, teacher of Hua Luogeng) of Cambridge University cried bitterly when he heard the news
He said at the memorial service of Trinity College
"Ramanujan's death is the most unbearable pain in my life"
Mathematician G·H·Hardy
Hardy, Godfrey Harold (February 7, 1877-December 1, 1947), died in Cambridge. At the age of 13 he entered Winchester College, which is famous for training mathematicians. Get a job in Cambridge at the age of 23. In the same year, he won the Smith Prize.
In the first half of the 20th century, a world-class British school of analysis was established.
April 2016
The famous investor Yuri Milner held a small dinner at his home
The guests present included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, founder Sergey Brin, Facebook CEO Mark Elliot Zuckerberg and dozens of other Silicon Valley leaders
Milner screened a new biographical film by director Matthew Brown-"The Knowing One"
Poster
The film tells the life of the legendary Indian mathematician Ramanujan
According to reports, after the banquet, Zuckerberg and others came out with red eyes.
They immediately announced that they would join forces to establish a new fund to commemorate Ramanujan
Ramanujan
The first foreign member of the Royal Society in Asia
First Fellow of Trinity College, University of Cambridge in India
If Nash in "Beautiful Mind" is a genius once in a century
Then Ramanujan is a mathematics genius who only came out in a thousand years
Srinivasa Ramanujan
He is one of the most legendary mathematicians of the 20th century
He independently discovered nearly 3900 mathematical formulas and propositions
Although he has almost no formal higher education in mathematics, he can write extraordinary theorems and formulas intuitively, and they are often proved to be correct. The notes he left to the world led to a lot of subsequent research
Hardy thinks Ramanujan is a mathematician with more talent than Hilbert (the uncrowned king of mathematics)!
According to his talent score, he gave Hilbert 80, Ramanujan 100, and himself 25
Hardy, Hilbert, Ramanujan
Ramanujan’s mathematical notes inspired the life-long research achievements of several Fields Medal winners
The Belgian mathematician V. Deligne proved a conjecture proposed by Ramanujan in 1916 in 1973, and thus won the Fields Medal in 1978 (the highest award in the field of mathematics)
…
December 22, 1887
Ramanujan was born into a declining Brahmin family in Errod County, Tamil Nadu, India
Indian caste system: the first rank of Brahmins are mainly monks and nobles, and the second rank of Kshatriya is military nobles and administrative nobles. The third class of Vaishya is the free civilian class of Aryans. The fourth level of Sudra.
Brahmins master the spiritual realm of religion and education, but they have almost nothing in the material aspect, that is, the secular realm.
My father is a small clerk in a cloth shop and only has a monthly salary of 20 rupees
A family of 7 lives on this meager income
When he was 15
A friend lent him the book "Summary of Pure Mathematics and Applied Mathematics" written by British mathematician G. Carr
The book contains more than 5,000 equations in algebra, calculus, trigonometry and analytic geometry
But no detailed proof is given in the book
It was this book that inspired Ramanujan’s enthusiasm for mathematics
He did not simply derive based on the existing proof method
Instead, treat each equation as a research question, try to prove it uniquely, and promote some of them.
What he did was equivalent to rebuilding a building with his own strength after seeing a building, but the method was different from the original one.
It took him 5 years to calculate the exercises in this book
Left hundreds of pages of math notes
Ramanujan Journal
Ramanujan, who is devoted to mathematics, is facing a difficult life
He who has no income can't even afford calculation paper
I had to use chalk on the temple floor tiles to calculate and deduct
Because I use my elbow to rub the words on the floor tiles
The elbow had a thick black cocoon, but he didn't know it
A thick book of math notes
Ramanujan was very excited about the formulas and propositions he wrote
However, the wisdom of 5 years of hard time is worthless when looking for a job
He didn’t get a college degree because of partial subjects, or even a professional background in mathematics
All job positions rejected him, a non-degree, non-professional "miscellaneous person, etc."
He lives in a slum, lying on the floor at night
It’s too tight to let the newlywed wife live in her natal home
…
At that time, if a Cambridge mathematics student made such a large number of outstanding research results
May publish papers soon and have a promising academic career
And Ramanujan lives in a closed town
No one but him can understand his mathematical formulas and propositions
In the eyes of everyone, he is a lover of mathematics more than a lover
A madman who is too poor to eat
Faith and fanaticism in mathematics drives Ramanujan
He can't stop thinking and deducing those complicated formulas
He said: Mathematics is everything
The densely packed mathematical symbols on the math notes
Are great paintings, but they are painted in invisible colors
Ramanujan's 1914 paper
The sand falling from the palm of the hand, the wind blowing the treetops, and the sun rising are just natural phenomena in the eyes of ordinary people.
In his eyes it is all exquisite and elegant mathematics
What Ramanujan sees is a world where everything is perfectly operated by mathematical laws
And the equations he wrote are his description of these perfect laws in mathematical language
This is so natural to him, just like a painter copying flowers, plants, insects and fish in nature
He has been living an extremely poor life
Until he met the first noble man in his life-Aiyar (S.Aiyar)
Aiyar introduced Ramanujan to a job as an accountant at the Madras Port Trust Office
The trust officer R. Rao appreciates Ramanujan’s mathematics abilities, and even prefers to give Ramanujan some money every month so that he does not go to work under his name and concentrate on mathematics research at home.
He encouraged Ramanujan: Be sure to let others discover your mathematical genius!
Although we Indians were defeated by the British by force, our geniuses can be as strong as theirs.
Even if Aiyar and Rao can feel Ramanujan’s genius
But it was very difficult to find someone in India who could understand Ramanujan’s research results.
They began to encourage Ramanujan to send the research results to mathematicians in the UK
The first one is MJM Hill from UCL, Ramanujan hopes he can accept himself as a student
However, after a long expectation, I received a rejection letter
"You have good taste in mathematics and some abilities, but you lack the necessary educational background and academic training"
Because there is no degree, non-professional, Ramanujan once again closed the door
Without giving up, he wrote to two mathematics professors in Cambridge and attached his own manuscript
The answer is still no, the letter was returned intact
The professors did not choose to believe in the cynicism and dreams of a small Indian employee
Until the emergence of Hardy, the most important Bole in Ramanujan’s life
Ramanujan & Hardy
…
Hardy knew gold, and immediately gave Ramanu an invitation to study at Cambridge University
In India where the caste system was strict in the early 20th century, a Brahmin was not allowed to go abroad
Once he goes abroad, others will refuse to talk to his family, refuse to marry his children
Going to the UK is a bet on everything for Ramanujan
Ramanujan looked at the ships on the sea, kneeling and begging his mother and wife for forgiveness
He must find people who can understand his mathematics research, he must go to England
In 1914, Ramanujan finally came to the coveted Cambridge University
Ramanujan, who arrived in Cambridge for the first time, was controversial because of the step-free derivation of the formula and was rejected by traditional mathematicians.
Even called "liar from India"
He originally thought that the papers that could be published quickly could not be published, but he was arranged to study basic mathematical proof courses
The awkward situation in the land of dreams made Ramanujan extremely painful
He and Hardy had a big quarrel, almost broke
Hardy firmly believed in Ramanujan’s genius, but he also firmly believed that Ramanujan could be recognized by academia only by proving those formulas.
Ramanujan, who has been self-taught, began to struggle to re-learn the proof
Hardy guided him step by step to write a rigorous proof in the modern academic sense
Calculating day and night, in the cold and humid winter environment in the UK, Ramanujan, who insisted on a vegetarian diet due to religious factors, quickly weakened
Coughing non-stop throughout the winter, his cough quickly turned into tuberculosis
Even in the hospital, Ramanujan kept deducing and calculating, and proved the integer split during his illness.
In 5 years, they jointly published 28 important papers
Hardy overcame all the difficulties of the academic committee and tried his best to win the honor of an academician for the Indian mathematician Ramanujan
He knows the significance of this to Ramanujan and his relatives far away in India.
Srinivasa Ramanujan in Cambridge
In 1917, Ramanujan contracted tuberculosis that was incurable at the time
In 1919, he finally returned to his hometown, but his condition continued to worsen
Only a year later, he died in Madras at the age of 32
The news of his death broke the heart of the mathematics community, and Hardy was crying at a memorial service held at Cambridge University.
He is also waiting for his Indian friends to come back and continue to study with him
Ramanujan’s short life left a fascinating and profound formula and proposition, with more than 3900
These formulas later appeared mysteriously in the branches of mathematics, mathematical physics, algebraic geometry, etc.
It was not until 1997 that part of it was finally completed
And organized into 5 volumes for publication
Hardy is an atheist, but he watched Ramanujan use mathematical intuition to accurately predict
Use equations and propositions to describe extremely complex mathematical laws
He said: "We study mathematics, Ramanujan discovered and created mathematics"
Originally considered by generations of mathematicians to be a natural unsolvable mystery
Ramanujan wrote the equation, which shocked the entire mathematical community
He has also made many achievements in the fields of elliptic functions, hypergeometric functions, divergent series, etc.
The last achievement in his life-imitating theta function strongly promoted the use of solitary wave theory to study the deterioration and spread of cancer cells and the motion of tsunami
Recently, some experts believe that this function is likely to be used to explain part of the mystery of cosmic black holes
And surprisingly, when Ramanujan first proposed this function
People don’t know what a black hole is
Black hole
Indians commemorating Ramanujan
He is called the "Son of India" together with Mahatma Gandhi (M. Gandhi), the poet R. Tagore and others
During the millennium, Time magazine selected the 100 most influential figures of the 20th century
The only philosopher selected is Wittgenstein
Ramanujan is praised as the greatest mathematician in India in a thousand years
Ramanujan once said
"If a formula cannot represent the will of God, then it is worthless to him"
A genius like Ramanujan
Maybe it is a gift from God to mankind
There are several years of birth, but knowledge is boundless, and truth is eternal
And because of this
To burn a lifetime to capture the eternal glimpse of light