What does it mean to "know" infinity? For most of us, mathematics is a set of rules learned in a classroom. But for , it was a language of the divine, a series of truths that appeared to him in dreams and visions.
In 1913, Ramanujan sent a letter to the renowned British mathematician at Cambridge University. The letter contained pages of wild, unexplained formulas. Hardy later remarked that these theorems "must be true, because, if they were not true, no one would have the imagination to invent them". Man Who knew Infinity
This led to a historic, albeit difficult, collaboration. Hardy was an apostle of rigorous proof, while Ramanujan was a man of pure intuition. Together at Trinity College, they bridged two worlds, producing groundbreaking work on: What does it mean to "know" infinity
: Identifying a special class of numbers with more divisors than any smaller number. In 1913, Ramanujan sent a letter to the
Ramanujan’s life was tragically short; he died in 1920 at just 32 years old. Yet, his "Lost Notebook," rediscovered in 1976, continues to inspire today. His "mock theta functions" are now used by physicists to understand the behavior of and superstring theory —concepts Ramanujan could never have known existed.
: Calculating the number of ways a whole number can be split into smaller parts.
