{"id":3379,"date":"2015-12-09T23:31:32","date_gmt":"2015-12-09T23:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/?p=3379"},"modified":"2015-12-09T23:31:32","modified_gmt":"2015-12-09T23:31:32","slug":"the-believer-encounter-with-the-infinite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2015\/12\/09\/the-believer-encounter-with-the-infinite\/","title":{"rendered":"The Believer – Encounter with the Infinite"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Here’s a somewhat romanticized but fascinating account of the one-of-a-kind mathematical genius Ramanujan:<\/p>\n

How did the minimally trained, isolated Srinivasa Ramanujan, with little more than an out-of-date elementary textbook, anticipate some of the deepest theoretical problems of mathematics\u2014including concepts discovered only after his death?<\/p>\n

The story of Ramanujan is a variation on the same mythopoeic tale related in Star Wars and the New Testament, of a special boy born into adversity. A mother cannot conceive. The Goddess appears in a dream, promising a son through whom the God will speak to his creation. While pregnant, the mother travels to her ancestral home. During the winter solstice, the boy is born, under signs in the heavens that portend great events: his horoscope, cast by his mother, predicts that he will be a genius beset by great suffering. \u201cSvasti Sri,\u201d it reads, \u201cwhen the moon was near the star Uttirattadi, when Mithuna was in the ascendant, on this auspicious day\u201d Ramanujan is born. And indeed, his will be a short life, full of triumph and disaster. Growing up, he is gentle and quiet. Weightless is the word one of his childhood acquaintances uses in Robert Kanigel\u2019s The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan<\/em>. Beginning in his teenage years, Kanigel writes, Ramanujan \u201cwould abruptly vanish\u2026 Little subsequently became known\u201d about these disappearances. Around this time, Ramanujan acquires a hoary old text (G. S. Carr\u2019s Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure Mathematics) that initiates him into the arcana. The Goddess begins to appear to Ramanujan in his dreams, showing him scrolls covered in strange formulae. \u201cN\u0101kkil ezhutin\u0101l,\u201d he later said. \u201cShe wrote on my tongue.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Believer – Encounter with the Infinite<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s a somewhat romanticized but fascinating account of the one-of-a-kind mathematical genius Ramanujan: How did the minimally trained, isolated Srinivasa Ramanujan, with little more than an out-of-date elementary textbook, anticipate some of the deepest theoretical problems of mathematics\u2014including concepts discovered only after his death? The story of Ramanujan is a variation on the same mythopoeic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3pfIY-Sv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3379"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3382,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3379\/revisions\/3382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}