As a university level mathematician myself, I have to emphasise just how insanely genius you need to be in order to not only understand high level pure maths but be making breakthroughs in the fields, all without any formal education or access to mathematical textbooks. Its almost more impressive than anyone else because he did everything solely based on his own brainpower.
Personally, I'm willing to assert the opposite. He wasn't such a genius when it came to mathematics despite his lack of formal education, but because of it.
A point to note here is that there were many theorems that were already discovered by the mathematicians of that time. But Ramanujan didn't get them from anywhere rather he discovered them all on his own which many different mathematicians discovered over a period of time.
That's fascinating..... Hundreds of mathematicians spent their lifetimes to discover an equation which he discovered on his own till the age of 23.... Once he told Dr. Hardy that equations just appear before him in the state of meditation..... It's like Universe was speaking to him in its purest language i.e. Mathematics.
@@creedbratton4950 Ah sorry If I misunderstood. But What I was thinking you meant by the comment was that it was impressive that he discovered concepts and equations that were discovered by a multitude of other methanations without even having much support material. I was trying to support the statement that it was impressive. It might not have come across that way though.
I studied this man in high school (I'm 40 now). I taught myself algebra, calculus, matrix analysis, quantum mechanics and elementary particle physics, but the moment I started studying this man's work, I was completely stumped. I had no idea what I was looking at. Ramanujan was centuries ahead of his time.
Once an interviewer asked to gh hardy how would u rate urself,einstien,ramanujan out of 100,this is the real answer hardy gave,i will give myself 37/100,einstien 66/100 nd ramanujan 97/100. Ramanujan's than written theories r helping scientists now in the study of black holes,ramanujan said godess saraswasti comes in my dreams nd gives me all these equations,nd infact many scientists hav speculated there is a dimension greater than ours where all the mystries of universe r answered,its often called as akashic records(akash in hindi means sky),if we consider einstein as principal of best school of knowledge in the world thn ramanujan would be the head of the board of education of the world,we indians were never good at marketing our things,thts y evrything got stolen from here by westrn countries nd sold by labeling there names,from surgery to invention of 0,from shampos to agriculture to drainage systms nd what not,we indians had knowledge of the motions of planets nd stars 1000s of years before any westrn scientists,nd there r proofs of this in our culture,traditions,engravings on our temples,the invention of atom bomb was inspired from geeta,hindus holy book,there is an interview by eisenhower giving credit of his invention to our geeta,mark zuckerburg,steve jobs came to a temple in the north of india during there worst days,nd followed the path tht poojari(priest)suggested thm,just search gadhchiroli baba nd steve jobs or zuckerberg story,u will undrstand,we r the worlds oldest surviving civilization,we know alot of things tht world dont,from past 1200 years we were ruled by some shitty people who just looted our country,1st there were mughals,thy broke our temples,killed our people,converted thm to islam,thn britishers came,india financed ww1 nd ww2 for the britishers,if u want to know more about tht,just search shashi tharoor oxford speech on what britishers took from india,but now finally we got a leader like modiji,who is not only motivating us but also reminding us of glories nd achivmnts of hinduism in the past,thts y now a days u see all this things about india is coming out nd everybody is surprised by this,india is not developing,it is reglcapturing what had been looted from us in the name of secularism.
@@rahulsharma-ht7ut Mr.Sharma let's focus on the present and future now. Our country more embroiled in hate and discriminative culture. Why not people like us contribute more to science and tech for the future. Also government should invest more in all that. I don't care about what the British stole anymore. We're richer given the state we are in right now. Yet we the people choose not to maintain it.
S. Ramanujan was a mad genius. We, in India, were taught about him through textbooks and what nots. You'll always find his face in museums and science fairs. Man revolutionised maths.
Hardy was a genius himself. One of the greatest of his generation. He helped Ramanujan throughout the years with great success. Their joint works are incredible. But even he himself admitted that there is a high possibility that Ramanujan could have become the greatest mathematician of his generation, and that his achievements during his short life already qualified him as one of the greatest. He also said that when all his works will be finally analyzed, his true genius will seem even greater than they did that day. He was right.
"Rating pure mathematical talent on a scale from 0-100, Hardy gave himself a 25, Littlewood 30, David Hilbert 80, and Ramanujan 100, that is - the greatest possible genius." - From Futility Closet's episode on Ramanujan. I take a bit of an issue with this video's attitude towards Britain; Hardy and others like Littlewood were extremely encouraging towards Ramanujan, and he was treated seriously and with respect by the academic institutions, much more so than he ever was in India. His story is actually a very positive example to highlight that British colonialism is not the monolithic evil that some people today try to make it out to be.
@@debasishghoshsays I didn't say it was; It's a just a more nuanced subject than some people today seem to think. There were bad things and good things, and Britain's treatment of Ramanujan was definitely one of the good things.
There is a large misconception regarding Ramanujan that he was not able to prove his own theorems, which is very far from truth ofcourse, he proved most of his own results and latter in his life when he was sick , he noted down only the final results in his notebook and did the proof work in his slate, for those who don't know what a slate is, it's a mini chalk board, with a mini chalk and a peace of cloth that works as a duster. Slates were really popular in India at that time and you can find them still today in rural parts of India, the reason he didn't note down the proofs but only the final results was because papers were really expensive at that time and so as to note down the most of his work in as little space as possible, he only noted down the final results in his paper notebook and did the proofs in his slate.
At 9:04 the map of India isn't correct and complete and i am shocked many of Indian wouldn't ask you to correct this but watch your video and write comments for else shame to them for this i disleked this video and the patriot my fellow Indians to do so for our country
@@shammohansood3112 You disliked a video of what seems to be the greatest Mathematician of all time - an indian Mathematician - because of a fault in a map by the presenter! Are you kidding me?
@@shammohansood3112 that map is of pre independence India as the year suggested.the map is correct for the time period mentioned.don’t be a snowflake and start spreading hate,life is too short to get offended in these little things,take a step back and enjoy the beautiful things life has to offer
@@KabirSoni78 That is not pre independence india, that is India without Khasmir. A disputed territory of india and pakistan, they fought quite a few wars over that land. Yes, he is just a dumb nationalist but you should your facts straight
Ramanujan was most likely the most incredibly gifted mathematician to have ever lived. To be able to accomplish what he did with the resources and education that he had is nigh unfathomable.
@@nicopys1574 it’s the curiosity and obsession that makes them to work hard. And not to mention they didn’t had distractions like phones which helped them better to focus.
The Mock Theta Functions which is used to explain Black Holes was proved 92 years after his death . Just goes to show how far ahead of his time he was .
Maybe that's just the first time someone actually paid attention to those specific equations, rather than being an indicator of how much time was put into trying to prove that equation.
@@user-ff1ws1sf2u true, and there are a lot of mathematical tools used to study black holes, much of them developed long before Ramanujan and thousands of mathematicians contributed to them. If one had to single out one of them, it would have to be Riemann. The connection of Ramanujan to black holes is blown way out of proportion, but it fuels the imagination.
"he may not of started out on top of humanities wall of knowledge, but that didn't matter S R just built his own". Beautifully put Thoughty2 beautifully put.
Maybe his ideas were only possible without the wall of knowledge. If he had been educated in them they might have negated the development of his thought patterns they way they came to be.
I think you described his fantastic genius the right way: missing formal education he studied the thousands of formulas until they talked to him. His brain created a language for him and only him!
So there's something to be said for just reading the books at home, and not going to lectures and doing homework for a teacher? Usually educators insist the latter is the best path to take. Einstein was a bit like that too: he stopped going to lectures and chose himself what books to study. That worked out for him, because his electricity professor did not teach Maxwell's Equations, which turned out to be the basis of Special Relativity. Ramanujan DID have formal education, but he got thrown out for not bothering (AFTER his school years) with the multiple other subjects that colleges insisted on at that time. This stymies many boys and girls who have a specific interest and don't want to spend time and effort on everything else. If we insist every child must have a broad, general, education we block the single-minded geniuses. The funny thing is that this does not apply to sports and fine arts: there are hundreds of kids spending several hours a day perfecting their tennis or football skills, or practising an instrument, but that's accepted and rewarded, and leads for a few of them to fame and fortune. This was understood at the end of the 19th century, when there was talk of the music colleges and art schools in London joining the federal University of London. The university insisted that they would have to adopt its general requirements for admission, which they realised would bar too many boys and girls who could profit from studying with them. For Ramanujan, it was fortunate that Trinity College, Cambridge (or specifically GH Hardy) was able to be more flexible in whom it chose to admit than the Indian institutions of that time.
@@faithlesshound5621 Complete understanding is essential for genius to exist. But, the purpose of education institutions isn't to make geniuses, it for them to do work and have a job.
Hardy was asked where Ramanajun ranked in the pantheon of mathematical genius. Hardy replied "From a scale of 0 to 100, i would place myself at 20, Whitehead at 30, Hilbert at 80, and Ramanajun at 100." Such was the monumental scale of his genius. Had he lived to old age, there is no doubt he would be remembered as the most gifted mathematician to ever live. Im not being hyperbolic. He was truly one of a kind!
Just a comment: The photograph at 12:17 is not of Srinivasa Ramanujan. It is another famous living Indian mathematician, S. R. S. Varadhan, a winner of the Abel Prize, and currently a faculty at the Courant Institute, NYU.
@@Allinone-gw2sw the map he is referring is that during the 1900s , and at that time Bangladesh was also the part of bharat , so yeah ...that should also have been there
Ramanujan frequently said, "An equation for me has no meaning, unless it represents a thought of God."-and he wasn't kidding. Like ancient Indian mathematicians, Ramanujan only noted the results and summaries of his works; no proof was worked out for the formulae he came up with. He straightaway credited his work to the divine providence of Mahalakshmi of Namakkal, a family goddess whom he looked to for inspiration. The mathematician said that he dreamed of the Goddess' male consort Narasimha, who is denoted by droplets of blood, after which, scrolls of complex mathematical work unfolded in front of his eyes.
@R A spritual intelligence :) sadly, these days only a feature in a select few, when really, we all need to to be more spiritual. I'm not religious, but I am a spritual person, in that there is awe and wonder in the macro universe that is us.. because we observe it.
@R A taliking of limescale, there's new tech to sequester carbon from sea water.. As in nature but faster.. A stainless drum is electrified where sea water is passed through, capturing huge amounts of carbon which forms the mineral, which is returned to the sea and hence locked.. desalination is a happy byproduct. The ammonia in the process still needs attention, the worst greenhouse gas imaginable. We seem to be on a similar wave length, perhaps you'd like to listen to the podcast show I co-host, where we talk about these matters, amongst others.. Neoborn and Andia Human Show (NAAHS)
Movie: The Man Who Knew Infiniy (2015) A great movie about this man. It also helps that the actors include the likes of; Dev Patel, and Jeremy Irons. Highly recommended.
It's almost as if the Universe didn't want him to uncover all it's secrets, so he was taken from us at such an early age. I only imagine what people like him can discover/invent if they had a longer lifespan.
Yeah, no it was not the universe, it was very much the monarchy, yes, the one everyone wept for recently who was directly responsible for his and a few million deaths in their colonies. (Sry for the dark turn, no hard feelings)
I wonder if his lack of formal education in mathematics actually helped him make discoveries which were made down paths that formal education would steer you away from - as in he could see things in a different way to most other mathematicians that had been trained a certain way
True that, but just imagine a pure enthusiast taking a book which was just a catalog of important results and making breakthroughs in Mathematics. Blows my mind. Being a researcher in math, I see the 6 millennial unsolved problems in math and wonder, even a high school math student seeing those problems the first time could make suggest an approach which eventually would be the solution.
@@supreethmv human creativity and ingenuity is terrifying, and someone like Srinivasa Ramanujan was the very embodiment of that imo. Unbound by the conventions of academia early on probably did aid his growth and later works.
Perhaps one less appreciated aspect of Ramanujan’s ascent, or realisation of his capabilities, is the spare time he found to devote to his itch. He was not a Maths degree holder; he was a clerk at a port authority. People forget; he did math in his spare time, for fun; as a release. Maybe one takeaway from Ramanujan’s story is the importance of hobbies and free, unrestricted thinking, in any field really. They say the first logarithmic tables too were an outcome of a quirky hobby.
Absolutely right, u have really grasped the true meaning of RAMANUJAN'S LIFE. There was no hurry or compulsion to score very high marks to obtain scholarship or admission in an Prestigious University, this shows we all should chase our passion , we all r genius but the British Created an education system to make slaves, we make win the race of life but still remain unhappy and be a 🐀 🐁
@@UPAKHOSALA What? No. Don’t forget that it was Ramanujan who approached Professor Hardy at Cambridge with his results and not the other way round. Please don’t misinterpret what is being written by me. The British system of modern education ensured people like Ramanujan got the opportunity they did. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you and stop blaming the British for everything.
I first came across Ramanujan's story in a physics book by Michio Kaku back in the 90s. I was dumbfounded by his story and how utterly talented he was in Math. Later i tried to study his Modular Functions..and as Hardy once said about him..it "defeated me completely".
oops 🙊😬 Andrewoidrewo it was told by my own get to see it happens oooi to get to go with a friend who was in my mind to toilet and sink is not a lot to be in a while
Sad to think of how much more he could have created if had lived until 70 or 80... Like with Niels Henrik Abel, who died at 27 only, and Mozart (35), with his more than 600 works. Another 600 Mozart masterpieces... what a dream!
Once an interviewer asked to gh hardy how would u rate urself,einstien,ramanujan out of 100,this is the real answer hardy gave,i will give myself 37/100,einstien 66/100 nd ramanujan 97/100. Ramanujan's than written theories r helping scientists now in the study of black holes,ramanujan said godess saraswasti comes in my dreams nd gives me all these equations,nd infact many scientists hav speculated there is a dimension greater than ours where all the mystries of universe r answered,its often called as akashic records(akash in hindi means sky),if we consider einstein as principal of best school of knowledge in the world thn ramanujan would be the head of the board of education of the world,we indians were never good at marketing our things,thts y evrything got stolen from here by westrn countries nd sold by labeling there names,from surgery to invention of 0,from shampos to agriculture to drainage systms nd what not,we indians had knowledge of the motions of planets nd stars 1000s of years before any westrn scientists,nd there r proofs of this in our culture,traditions,engravings on our temples,the invention of atom bomb was inspired from geeta,hindus holy book,there is an interview by eisenhower giving credit of his invention to our geeta,mark zuckerburg,steve jobs came to a temple in the north of india during there worst days,nd followed the path tht poojari(priest)suggested thm,just search gadhchiroli baba nd steve jobs or zuckerberg story,u will undrstand,we r the worlds oldest surviving civilization,we know alot of things tht world dont,from past 1200 years we were ruled by some shitty people who just looted our country,1st there were mughals,thy broke our temples,killed our people,converted thm to islam,thn britishers came,india financed ww1 nd ww2 for the britishers,if u want to know more about tht,just search shashi tharoor oxford speech on what britishers took from india,but now finally we got a leader like modiji,who is not only motivating us but also reminding us of glories nd achivmnts of hinduism in the past,thts y now a days u see all this things about india is coming out nd everybody is surprised by this,india is not developing,it is reglcapturing what had been looted from us in the name of secularism.
honestly, i am actually crying right now, imagining the pain he would have gone through, not because of his sickness but because of his unfulfilled works. kudos to the great Man
I think most scientists go through this at some point in life. They sacrifice so much for science and our system really does not value them as they deserve.
@@vgb_hereNot anymore. Now countries are hungry for intelligent people. I'm so thankful of that. Nerds live better life than muscular boys who only think about girls
People nowadays used the word "Genius" to lightly, and we lost a way to describe in simple term how to address people like Ramanujan. Outlier like him is so far and few among billions of people, not every smart or bright person, should get call genius, "Hard working" maybe, "talented" sure, but when you hear stories of people like Ramanujan and their impact to the betterment of science and humanity in general, that is the time to use the term "Genius".
I don’t know why, but for some reason I find this story incredibly moving. Perhaps because it makes me wonder how many other geniuses (in all fields, not just maths) are out there now living in poverty; unrecognised, unflourishing, their fruits or potential gifts lost to us. And how many other geniuses have been lost to us in the past... That being said - considering the stultifying nature of many standard school curricula across the world, perhaps lack of conventional schooling itself was a reason for his genius. Maybe a conventional education would have broken or shackled him. Which is also an indictment of our current system.
That is an interesting thought that I myself have entertained, and Hardy himself wrote an essay on Ramanujan after his death wondering if Ramanujan would definitely have been served better by having a more formal, traditional and cushioned upbringing and education. He reached a different conclusion than ours and after reading his essay, I feel the same.
Don't look at the school system from a single kid's perspective, look at it from a world perspective. I've always said, school system 'cuts the peaks and uplifts the lows', the 1% genius' that could grow without school get reduced, but on the other hand, the rest of the population of kids who could grow without even being decent at calculus shrink as well. Is it the best tradeoff ? Idk, but I'd say 5 normal horses at the cost of 1 race horse seems like a better deal to me.
I just hope people do a little bit of study on the topic of 'education system' before taking inspiration from people like Ramanujan. He was a Genius, with a capital G. But only 1 out of all humanity. If you pick up any random person from just 50 yrs ago and compare his overall knowledge with respect to the respective time period's peak knowledge available to the public, you'd easily find more people today know about and even understand cutting edge academic papers and also are vastly more knowledgable in general. This isn't completely due to media being more accessible, but also because they have been bootstrapped with a lot of knowledge from the school/education system that may seem completely superfluous to the learner but brings their intellects up. Someone like Ramanujan might be mudded in the process but that's the tradeoff. Removing school system or not letting your kids go to school may have 1% chance of them being a genius at a specific field but it has 99% chance of them growing up into complete idiots.
@@cryonim Thank you for your comment. People can be quick to critique systems, such as public, standardised education. You rightly highlight the value widespread access to education provides humanity. Surely it is better to protect such systems and if the few geniuses are not catered for then do so. Simply writing off education because it does not foster to rare few is like throwing the baby out with the bath water.
At 4:20 and 9:04 the map of India isn't correct and complete and i am shocked many of Indian wouldn't ask you to correct this but watch your video and write comments for else shame to them for this i disleked this video and the patriot my fellow Indians to do so for our country
I feel his lack of formal education is the reason he was able to develop so fast and go so far. The lack of preconceptions of how it should work let him explore to find his own way.
My thesis was on Srinivasa Ramanujan's mathematics behind quantifying the human genome. There was a skeptical acceptance to it, but then it was apparent by his complex, but uniquely "musical" formulae. that his level of thought was beyond any level of critical thinking we see today. He is beyond a doubt the greatest mind I have researched (Newton and Einstein are close seconds).
Newton is definitely the greatest mind for me. He literally deviced a completely unorthodox and alien way of mathematical calculations, calculus, just to prove his theory of gravity. A true madlad indeed.
Schools tend to teach us how to do something "the right way", even when the "right way" is just one way to solve things. S.R managed to see math from his own perspective, and that's the magic trick we will never understand.
Schools teach you the most common or popular or most well known ways of doing things because it allows you to communicate with the world. If they taught you baae 6 math you would have difficulty buying things because you wouldnt understand how to read prices. If they taught you the japanese view of world history you wouldnt understand why america attacked japan in ww2. When you hear the term 'those who forget history are doomed to repeat it,' remember that the saying applies to all subjects. Sure, you can invent your own math and do things your way.... if youre a once-in-a-lifetime genius. But most of us arent. We dont have enough life in us to rebuild everything from the ground up. And even if we did, most of our discoveries would just be redundant rediscoveries that had already been made by others.
@@Vires-in-Adversis yes, thats why i didnt say anything about him at all, but explained why schools teach im the way that they do. His success is an example of rare genius, not an indictment of how schools teach.
Arran, You have this nack of turning even the most obscure of topics and biographies into fascinating viewing. Your enthusiasm is contagious and I always end up smiling back at you - and winking back (I said winking!) with a “You’re welcome” Keep the great work coming. You are a true gem.
If this great man would have lived into his 60's or 70's he would of by a long shot been the greatest mathematician this world has ever seen, it was truly a natural born gift.
He was gifted. Gifted individuals are very much misunderstood by "mere mortals", because they are 'other worldly' so to speak. They can be treated quite badly due to their ability to fit in and often have difficulty in the regular world. I think many of these people end up addicted and lost to society - along with their genius.
Instead of supporting each individual on what they're passionate about, we usually tend to force people to learn everything about everything, not taking into consideration that a brilliant innovative idea in a specific field is much better than the same mediocre work in every field.
My question to a student while teaching chemistry has always been - do you want to understand or do you want to get a passable grade - C? If students wants to get a C - "These 5 rules are the things you have to know by heart! and to a certain extent be able to apply the knowledge" If it wants to understand - "These 5 rules are the things you have to know by heart! And you must ask questions about them!"
Unfortunately, specialization has its limits. Not everyone is fortunate enough to be a genius, and the majority of those who go to college for a specialized degree and only devote themselves to studying a certain field are going to hit areas they simply cannot see vs someone whose work from a previous field starts to spill over to the current one (Specialist vs Generalist. basically). I think Ramanujan was in the right conditions for advancing in this field (No structured education that held his hand, a deep desire to learn Math, Opportunity to be creative and correct his own mistakes instead of a teacher/professor telling him to stop doing this a certain way, etc). It's not a matter of specialization, but upbringing. We can see that the "King" of Mathematics in Cambridge who was recognized as one of the elites of the subject was stumped on Ramanujan's findings, despite himself being specialized to a great extent on this one subject.
How are students supposed to know what they have a passion or natural gift for if they aren't exposed to variety of subject matters...? And as said, not everyone is a prodigy. The K - 12 education system is designed to provide students with a basic & uniform foundation of working knowledge, from which they can build upon into adulthood. Middle / high school is when students begin to find their niche as their personalities develop, and it becomes clear which of them are more academia bound and where their interests lay. In my high schools (I went to a couple), we had AP / IB classes which were basically college level classes that students could take and earn credits while still in HS. Most of them were 100-level classes (introduction to ____), but nonetheless they're a good opportunity to dip your toes in the water.
Generalized education is great up to a certain point. For a lot of people, high-school is a waste of time. Just ask those in public schooling. There are countries that dedicate for example those 3-4 years of time by putting young people in various specialized schools that they can opt in or out of. They get practical hands on experience, rather than sit in the same room all day writing essays about random books and debating poems. Most specialized jobs nowadays end up paying even more than a lot of post college/university grads. When you've developed a passion for carpentry since high school you'll be much more motivated due to a proper upbringing and a sense of nostalgia to outperform those that have started their education in their mid 30s because their college English major didn't "pay off".
That's why I adore this channel. I'm not good at math, but as a human being I have to appreciate this man as the genius he was. He has to be admired and remembered, but I would never knew about him if it wasn't for Thoughty2. My history classes never mentioned him, my math classes also, so how should I know about the existence of such a great mind? 👍 Thoughty2 is always here for us!
Movie: The Man Who Knew Infinity (2015) is a standout documentary about Srinivasa Ramanujan. The film depicts Ramanujan as being much younger than both Hardy and Littlewood. The age difference is only 10 and 2 years between Ramanujan and Hardy and Littlewood respectively (Ramanujan was born 1887, Hardy 1877 and Littlewood 1885). Apart from that, it’s difficult to fault the film.
India and Indians have always been looked down upon by the world whereas in reality they're a treasure trove of knowledge and prosperity. In ancient times, people from the world used to visit India for knowledge, enlightenment, trade and much more. No other country in the world can match India in terms of what India has given to the world and quite forgivingly like a nourishing mother. Ancient times India had various universities such as takshila, narmada university to name a few. Please do more research about India and you'd be fascinated by what you'll discover.
Hearing Ramanujan's story one has to wonder/ask themselves imagine all the untapped, uneducated kids around the poor and rough corners of this world and how many Ramanujan's might be hiding amongst them. Truly scary, sad, and impressive to think about.
“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”
The best and often overlooked resource a country has is its minds. One of the reasons the US has flourished so incredibly is because of constantly attracting and draining the world's brightest minds. l
I think part of his genius was the fact that he had to translate the math himself. Figuring things out like that yourself instead of having it spoon fed to you gives you a better structure for Figuring out other stuff. But the fact he did it with advanced math is so impressive. What an amazing man.
You may have hit on something with "had to translate the math himself." These days most students in the Anglo-American world are monolingual as far as studying goes. There may be some benefit as well as hardship from having to engage with a different language and culture in an academic setting, as many advanced students have to do in most of the world. In earlier times, the Republic of Letters read and wrote in languages which no ordinary people spoke: the classical forms of Latin, Hebrew, Sanskrit and Chinese. Ramanujan's mentor at Cambridge, GH Hardy, gives a lot of credit to his own study of Camille Jordan's Cours d'Analyse de l'École Polytechnique, a copy of which he smuggled into his old school library for maths enthusiasts such as Freeman Dyson to find. Dyson himself studied a maths text in German and translated another from Russian as a schoolboy.
@@faithlesshound5621 I mean, I only know one language, but yeah. Learning to read, write and think in another language could only help. But you have to have the capacity to do so in the first place. My comment was more on the teaching method of letting people figure out things themselves. Like in my two interests, psychology and martial arts (I'm actually a mathematical dummy) you give people a problem and let them figure out how to solve it. Like you spar a one two only and they figure out how to deal with it, or you lead your conversation in therapy so that they learn how to ask themselves the right questions. Using your own mind to figure stuff out will always impact their abilities more than just teaching them by telling them. It's like getting someone into weight lifting by always lifting half the weights for them. They will learn and get stronger, but never as much.
@@faithlesshound5621 let me know if I explained that well. I'm really bad at typing over my phone. My grammar could also use work. Been out of school for 10 years in a career where I don't write lol
@@9usuck0 Yeah, I see what you were getting at. It's like Newton benefitted from spending time on his own in lockdown during the plague after he had mastered the basics. By then he didn't need to be "set right" by his teachers and could fly on his own.
Being from the same Indian state as Shri. Ramanujam, its not suprising that he is ignored here. In Tamilnadu(India) where Shri. Ramanujam was born, he has least respect or mention. Rarely does he get mentioned in schools. Infact the movie made about him rarely got any attention due to political hatred spread against his religious background.
@@2PLUS2FIVE Its not him but them. There is a Tamilnadu party which keeps spreading hatred, genocide threats for his religious community backed by several organizations that want to demean his religion. THey put all the blame on this community to hide or divert their political failures and keep breaking people into vote banks.
Imagine a guy that started from Paleolithic age to 30th century math in shorter than 20 years. His rediscovery of Newton math took him like a week or two. This is like superhero fiction level brain.
What do you mean Paleolithic? India had world class British Universities even back then, and his peers and college professors helped him in his pursuits. Not to forget he was a brahmin, the socio-spiritual creme-de-la-creme of Hindu society. This video is exaggerating his socio-economic conditions.
@@mtarkes I was referring to the part in video starting at 16:45 with my exaggeration. Since he didn't have access to the major mathematicians when he was studying advance maths, it felt like he rediscovered several lifetime math work in less than 20 years. That is impressive to me. I had no assumptions of how Indian education was back then, or his status is elite or not.
Lol, what?? I don't think you know world history very well. India has been down for a 3 centuries because it got invaded, but it's historically one of the most advanced areas in the world.
@@quiet7632 I have no assumptions about India. Even if he was in Switzerland, my point is solely about him making advance math without aid of previous great mathematicians.
@@mtarkes There were British schools but no universities of any higher level( mainly becuse they wanted Indian to read and understand english for being an employee but not enough to work as officers) and just because they are brahmin doesn't mean he is rich, they were mostly priests and don't make much income. Maybe do some research before you sound idiotic. He lost his sibling and he lived in quarters while working as clerk.
When I was in class 8, 9 and 10 the math text book had a cover of a guy that imagined series of equations and numbers. Back then I thought this guy's parents must have make him do a lot of homework lol. But as time progressed, I became fascinated with computers, programming, logic and algorithms. Today I use those fundamentals on series to find solutions to problems that make my work easier everyday. The other day I was thinking what got me in to math and programming? I realized, it was the guy on the math text book cover.. I had studied his sequences and series for so long, I was just having fun with them. I have finished my masters in advanced algorithms and lets be honest when you're a dork as I am and want to be on a cover, the elementary school text book looks like a magazine. That guy was no other than Sir Srinivasa Ramanujan. He inspired a collective of mathematicians, engineers and scientists that developed the way we understand the world. I know he wasn't knighted by the queen to be called "Sir" but its a way among the us to show respect to what his genius has given us.
bruh, are you indian? i've seen him referred to as "sri srinivasa ramanujan", but not "sir". "sri" is an indian honorific title expressing much higher regard then "sir". i think it makes more sense, because he is more like a mathematical god.
There's a movie called The Man Who Knew Infinity, it's based on Ramanujan's life. Worth a watch and it amazingly depicts how exactly his knowledge was conceived. Great video!
Not much into mathematics but as a biologist and someone who enjoys learning. I have a lot of respect for this man and all who improve the mathematical field.
Imagine finding a new mathematical genius working as something like a janitor, perhaps with a troubled past. It's why I think we should treat everyone with good will, hunting for the next maths prodigy could benefit all of us.
Ya also imagine finding a new mathematical genius working as a janitor in a reputed math institute, with a troubled past but also solving a problem that even the professor took 2 year to solve and the students were unable to solve.Its also why I think we should treat everyone with good will,hunting for next math talent.
Thank you for sharing. This story brought tears to my eyes and silently reassured me that, no matter the odds... Anything is possible. As a sides note, I believe that his lack of a formal education might have been to his benefit as he was not constrained by the rules and prevailing traditions/pragmatism... Hence he was free to look at problems from just about any point without fear of being put down as being irrational. Talk about thinking outside the box!
Nah I think he might have gone farther if he had an education. Because he basically had to spend years reinventing the whole box before he could start anything new. But besides that, "prevailing traditions" aren't a box. They are just guideposts that tell us what has been tried before. If he had been able to study those he would have started out where the last guy left off.
I would like to point out something here. From 12:11 to 12:20 - that man is NOT Ramanujan. It's S.R. Srinivasa Varadhan! Mr. Varadhan is an eminent mathematician (and statistician) who is known for his seminal works on Martingale Problems and Large Deviation Theory. He's also an Abel Prize recipient as far as I can remember. His picture in the video is most probably during his Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) Kolkata days when A.N. Kolmogorov visited the institute.
At 4:20 and 9:04 the map of India isn't correct and complete and i am shocked many of Indian wouldn't ask you to correct this but watch your video and write comments for else shame to them for this i disleked this video and the patriot my fellow Indians to do so for our country
His understanding is astounding, he made previous breakthroughs by other mathematicians by himself. It's almost as if he was born earlier math would've been really different today.
If his scholarship to uni was not taken off due to his disinterest in non math subjects , he may have even developed the necessary metalanguage to articulate his thoughts , proofs etc .
Using that wall theory: If all other great mathematicians placed a brick or two on top of the previous generations, Ramanujan placed a dozen bricks floating well above the wall that we are still building to meet. Love your videos, by the way!
Honestly, when I hear stories about geniuses, no matter what field, make me inspired. It's crazy that he could just reverse engineer what was in that text book in a way in order to understand it. It reminds me of Jimi Hendrix and how he did the same thing but just with guitar. Who knows how many geniuses are just lurking out in the world
I loved Jimmy, and saw him at the Newport Jazz festival; however, I feel that many mathematical discoveries have a sublime beauty beyond the senses. Moreover, our universe seems to operate, or to be modelled on mathematical structures/ objects. As a mathematical physicist, my favorite recreation is listening to great music while doing mathematics. Jimmy was certainly 'in tune' with the universe on multiple levels, as are many other artists.
That gave me goosebumps, I've always thought how much knowledge we potentially lost though the history because not everyone is given an opportunity to develop their studies. It's amazing to hear about a man that had basically no help, but still understood and created so many things. I think this is an example of why we must accept everyone as potentially revolutionary. If every person starts to be given an opportunity to study instead of starving, we could have so many geniuses making their theorems and smart shit. The future would be actually incredible if we started to do so.
Well you forget many ancient works of philosophy and mathematics were destroyed by Christian Mobs in Alexandria , Athens etc and later on the Mongols destroyed a great library in Caliphate Baghdad in the 1200's . and so on in India ( nalanda , taxila etc) . one wonders what knowledge was lost due to mobs of ignorants . Today the woke mob rules many universities and they may engage in similar arson and destruction just because of some perception of an historical figure was not confirming to their present day political sensibilities etc. tch tch
Had Ramanujan lived to the grand old age of 80, we would be living in a much different world. In my opinion he was divine inspired. Interesting report. Greetings from Germany...🍺🖐
As an undergraduate, I took a course in number theory. There was a certain approach that was emphasized in the course. The professor was very well known and had been studying this material for decades. He gave us a problem. Prove that there is no largest prime. So using the methods that I had been taught I came up with a proof that was four pages long. I at that and thought, “that can’t be right. It was too simple of a concept to require that complex a solution. I set it a side and then, as is usually my case, 3 o’clock in the morning two days later I woke up with an idea, scribbled it down and then later refined it. It was a four line proof. So, I went to class. Someone else answered that question and filled up four boards with writing. I was expecting the professor to say that’s very good but there’s another way to do this. Instead, he opted to move on to the next question. I raised my hand and pointed out I had a different answer. He replied there wasn’t enough time to go into it. And I said it’s four lines long. He said put it up and I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it. I put the proof up and he looked at it for a little bit and then he got a piece of paper and wrote it down. Everyone in the class was a little shocked at this. Later I found out that that was a proof that was well known, but apparently this very experienced professor did not know about it. The thing about mathematics is that it’s a world which does not exist yet is governed by very strict rules. Finding a proof it’s a lot like finding a way through the forest in the middle of the night without a flashlight. However if you think the right way, there are some ways of solving problems that are much easier than others. There are very few people who can think in this way, but fortunately once a mathematical discovery has been made, others can use it indefinitely, as long as the record of the discovery is not lost. Mathematical theories do not wear out and mathematical results can endure forever.
Isn’t the proof that there is no largest prime a famously simple proof? Suppose there is a largest prime P. Let Q be the product of all primes P or less. Let R = Q + 1. R is therefore relatively prime to all factors of Q, and therefore R is also prime. But R is greater than P. Contradiction. Therefore P cannot be the largest prime.
@@hdthor won't we do a Q+2 rather than a Q+1? Cause if you do an odd number + 1, it will turn into an even which will definitely make it not a prime...
My father was a mathematician who died in the 1980s, and he very much admired Ramanujan. That's probably why I guessed you were going to talk about Ramanujan (and Hardy) even before you mentioned Hardy's name -- and of course as soon as you mentioned Hardy, I knew that I was right.
Imagine how many geniuses with poor and unfortunate family backgrounds are working at minimum wage jobs today. These people are being neglected and missed out for centuries and will continue for the next centuries to come.
@@NoName-to5xl I failed in conveying that I meant the same. 😅 By saying, "On the other side", I meant the completely opposite side. Genius like Ramanujan writes a letter to the best Mathematician at that time for financial help quoting he had some works to publish and he had an annual salary of ~20 pounds being a clerk.
@@NoName-to5xl According to ancient caste system, Santana Dharma (literally translates to "ancient way of life") which politically became a religion as Hinduism had four main categories - Brahmins(mainly teachers and intellectuals), Kshatriyas (warriors and rulers), Vaishyas (traders) and the Shudras (laborers). This system was completely based on the occupation of a person. A kid after learning the ability of decision making could have freely chosen where it belonged. I have read that there ware no feelings of inferiority or superiority. Everybody just respected their profession. Also, there was a completely different schooling system back then called as Gurukula. A chinese traveler who visited India back then was stunned at the diversity of people, and said if anybody had to the break the integrity of India has to be only by bringing in a different system of education. This unfortunately happened during the British rule in India. There are many concepts of math which are so similar to Ramanujan's in a subject called Vedic Mathematics. TLDR: Brahmins were the intelligent people.
Not that similar. Einstein was born to a wealthy middle class family which could afford university education. While university education can hamper a genius it also legitimises their ideas because they are then assumed to have been "trained" in the universal orthodox way. And Einstein's clerking spell is hugely exaggerated. He only worked as a clerk for one year while he found a university that was prepared to look past his rock-bottom degree result to allow him to study for a further degree. After that he resumed the academic career which had always been his intention. Shrivanasa Ramanujan's lack of formal education is why his ideas were never recognised in his lifetime.
But Einstein were a High Middle Class Boy ( Her Father can afford to buy sophisticated Electric Machine ( something like a IBM AS/400 (now IBM System i ) a heavy investment for the epoch 1887 1910 not fro poor guys....!!!!).....This is mere peasant family and peasant boy)....
His knowledge goes hand and glove with his spirituality. Mathematics isn't something we "made up" and there are some who believe it isn't even something we discovered, but rather something we were given. it is the language of the universe. Tesla and others had this same belief. That man was given a glimpse of the cosmos that most academics are far too cynical to comprehend. Incredible.
When I was younger my family had a gardener who later started cleaning the house as well, when we first met him he spoke 2 languages neither of which was english. In the 3 years he worked for us he was able to communicate very well with us and he learnt it through hearing my siblings and i speak and this was without any formal education and no exposure to english outside of our house on top of that he was about 30 years old, every now and again i think of what he could have become had he been given an opportunity to learn. stories like this make me happy and sad because its amazing to know that people like this exist but so sad when you realise so many of them will never come to prominence because of the state of our world
Possibly the most fascinating and unintentionally inspiring video I’ve ever seen from this channel, thank you so much for this I didn’t know any of it.
He was indeed a great genius and, however Hardy should be given a lot of credit for acknowledging his talent an inviting him to Cambridge, if Hardy had thrown away that letter the World certainly would not have seen Ramanujans Genius.
@@madd5 those were times when the World was going through Racism, however Hardy looked at the talent of the genius on the letter he received. Even today some of Ramanujans equations have not been solved . His genius was beyond compare.
@@jedus007 well hardy was a professor at one of the most prestigious schools at that time, safee to say he was intelligent aswell, and intelligent people rarely are racist, which i assume must be one of the main factors he didn't care as much to where ramanujan was from.
I lived in Erode, for 22 years. Even though I knew of S. Ramanujan, only after I moved to Chennai (Madras) I knew that he was from Erode too. Even though I share a similar story to S. Ramanujan, the one more thing I wish I shared with him was his intelligence. Still amazes people in 2022, long after he's gone!
Yeah his work on mock-modulo forms (and zeta functions) was recently proved by mathematicians in the US. They don't understand how he came up with it. The stuff they used to verify it was invented only after the days of Ramanujan. He was truly on another level. Also, it's "brahmin, not brahmian" - and you should probably use the proper map of india with kashmir (a british indian map would also suffice). Otherwise, nice video. I recommend watching the movie "The man who understood infinity".
@@sensei249 Our "Official map" is what we use in India. When representing India, the entire world must use it. There are no ifs and buts in this situation.
some people are self proud, some makes their parents proud. Some goes beyond and make a country proud on them. And we have this person, who made entire world proud.
@@isiso.speenie5994 That's a myth. Several geniuses made path breaking discoveries well after 50 years old. Had Ramanajun lived to a ripe old age he would have gone down as the greatest mathematician to ever live in the history of known sapiens. Even still, he is the greatest mathematical talent to ever live.
What I love about this story more than anything was the fact that he done things in his own way so much so that he made it impossible for people to take credit for his work
A brilliant genius who was taken away too soon. Imagine if he had lived longer, what more mathematical discoveries and breakthroughs we would have known.
The story of Ramanujan reminds me of one of my favorite composers, Lili Boulanger, who died at age 24 from intestinal tuberculosis or Crohn’s disease in 1918. But by the time of her death, she was already recognized by every composer in France as one of the most gifted musicians of her time. Her orchestration was not only on par with the great masters (Ravel, Stravinsky, Debussy, Koechlin, all much older than she was), but it was and is incredibly unique and personal. Impressively, she was able to balance a large orchestra with the organ, something that has always been a source of frustration for composers, even today-and she added a choir to that mixture, making it even more difficult. Her ideas were so mature, her counterpoint was impeccable, and even the way she used harmony is something I haven’t heard from any composer other than her. Dang, I probably sound like a total simp by now, but she wrote a 30-minute cantata for three solo singers and orchestra in the Wagnerian style at age 19… in two weeks. Two weeks. Imagine writing parts for upwards of 60 musicians in two weeks. I’m grateful for the music she left for us, but I wish she had lived longer!
actually he was also working on fermat's last theorem, he used some different approach becoz of which he called out hardy ramanujan number and using his methods and work for help it was proved in 1990's.
@Lassi Chsch Of course algebra comes from the arabic al-jabr "completion". And Indians independently invented 0 and the base number system. Math was truely a humanity-wide effort.
Beyond the humbling and moving story of Ramanujan himself, he is also a data point showing the incredible potential of humanity. If we could avoid blowing ourselves up, destroying our world, and generally being nasty to one another, what could we achieve?
Thanks for introducing me to this Super Genius. Ramanujan has to be one of the most amazing geniuses of all time. It's unfathomable what he had accomplished without any formal education in his field. It's so sad that his life was cut short at 32, before he could have reached his full potential. Just imagine how much further in Math & Science we could have been had he lived a full life.
I’d argue the lack of formal education made him a great genius. School and formal education is good but they tend to put people into a box. They limit people immensely
Love it. Ty for introducing us to this guy. Many of us would have never heard of him otherwise; and ofc with your unique brand of storytelling, which feels magical in itself.
I am from India, for us we know him right from the school because we were told his story in the school. I still remember my maths book front cover was imprinted with Srinivasa Ramanujan photo in the 10th grade.
10:55 OMG. As an Indian this is soooo accurate. We don't say boot or trunk. we say dicky. I can't believe you knew that Arran. Props to you for nailing the joke.
The thing is, there have probably been many people born with his level of mathematical genius at birth, but died before they were five years of age due to poverty, denying the world of their potential invaluable contributions.
Thank you for that fitting comment. I have often thought: How many Motzarts; Edisons; Dalis; Dr. Listers; Ramanujans; et al, have there been who never grew up or if they did lacked the resources to develop their gifts? Whenever a child dies for lack of food or medicine, we are losers. That cure for cancer you or a loved one needs; the next art that motivates you to new heights; the next break through in energy production and so much more could be lost forever. If we took what we waste on war, pooled the earth's resources to limit the loss of every precious child, the dividends would be beyond our imagination.
The life of S. Ramanujan was told (romanticized by cinema, of course, but still accurate) in a touching and beautiful 2015 movie "The Man Who Knew Infinity" directed by Matt Brown, with Jeremy Irons (Prof. Hardy) and Dev Patel (as Ramanujan).
Ramanujan had unparalleled intuition, but his weaknesses as I understand it is, he wasn’t so great developing the proofs of his wild insights. That book he acquired in high school has questions and answers but didn’t focus on proofs, and that molded his mental processes. This was very frustrating to G.E. Hardy who tried to train him up properly. R’s magical intuition arrived at correct theorems but it was usually not clear how he could have got there, and he couldn’t show how with rigor.
Well next time a math teacher says to me show your working out I'll tell him to suck it cause the greatest mathematician didn't do why should I have to. What he's done is created the greatest excuse ever for students
@@parthsavyasachi9348 most of his proves were incomplete as some logical steps obvious to him, werent all that obvious to everyone else. He worked with Hard, who deserves much credit for his open mindedness, to make up for that flaw.
I had a terrible time doing proofs in geometry when I was in school. But my answers were always correct. I later learned that I leapt over logic that was obvious to me, but not to “regular” people. My brain just worked differently.
@@jennaxoxox4821 When you leave out necessary arguments in the proof, the proof is simply wrong or incomplete. Intuition is a big part of mathematics but formalizing and generalizing an even bigger one, so each proof has to be airtight without gaps, so every other mathematician can follow the argumentation without problems. I am a mathematician and the first lesson I learned at Uni, to explicitly show everything in a proof, because intuitively knowing something is true is very different from actually proving something is true, as one is much harder than the other.
Inspirational story, thank you. Between Ramanujen's genius and Hardey's belief in him and Cambridge's support it's nice to know his light, brief as it was, was allowed to illuminate humanity in a callous world where it's easy to imagine the more likely outcome.
That last wall with Ramanujan's picture on it gave me goosebumps! Just the meaning of something like that is almost impossible to fathom! A beautiful metaphor for his genius.
Just goes to show that "genius" can't be taught. You have to be born with it. Schools can't really teach people the right way, because you'll always be influenced to think like the instructor/curriculum wants you to think.
Schools will quite often label someone as stupid when a lot of the time its their way of teaching thats the issue. I remember angering a lot of my teachers as they were unable to teach me how they wanted but if they gave me work they thought i couldn't do i would always complete it which infuriated them since it meant they couldn't enforce their teaching methods on me
I know this is fiction, but their is a Japanese light novel/manga/anime called Highschool of Elite. It is a normal boy who is raised to be a genius, inside a white room, and in order to gain his freedom, he needs to beat the natural born genius on his new academy. It is really interesting fiction story.
I remember encountering some of his theorem's while studying for my bachelor's in compsci. I also remember thinking how esoteric they were, and wondered how anyone could develop these things, especially without any access or connection to the body of mathematical knowledge that existed at the time.
Kudos to Arran for making a video on Sir Ramanujan. Often felt he haven’t got the recognition he deserves for what he did for the field of mathematics and the world as a whole.
It's just simple extreme genius !! He should have received acclaim like Einstein and Newton, but his talent & contributions were left unappreciated. If he has solved such hard problems without any formal training/education, imagine what he could have done had he been trained. Many of the worlds hard problems would have been solved by now. It's a tragic incident that he died so early. A tribute to Sir Ramanjun and the world moves on!
He's one of those people that are born to do one thing. He's born for mathematics.. And to think that we still have difficulties understanding his work just means that he's so ahead of everyone..
I suspect Ramanujan advanced in such a major way BECAUSE he began learning entirely on his own for at least a decade... that his mind went in an actual sequential direction rather than just spending far too much time trying to translate the work of others. From there... he was soon able to see various patterns arise from all of those numbers on account of that self-invented routine.
I can't help but wonder if his genius was helped by his lack of formal education. He wasn't burdened by other's limited thinking. He was free to go far beyond what was thought capable because of his lack of fornal education IMO
I can relate. In 1965 at age 11 a guy I knew, created a combination digital/analog controller for his two lane electric race car set. He was my age and even born on the same day as me. When he applied to take optional science classes in High school he was denied. The one year he was allowed to take science because it was required for graduation, he made the highest grade in the class. He claims to understand gravity.
I had an algebra teacher in high school (1980) who practically worshiped Ramanujan. There was a photo of the young man on the wall near the chalkboard, and this teacher more than once said that if we could understand all his equations we'd see a lot of the hard science fiction become fact. He was so right.
@@barhat961 This was over 40 years ago, but I think he was local (this was northern California). He was also a chess grandmaster and ran a chess club after school. He was a danged good teacher; I remember him giving me a fail on an algebra question because I guessed at the answer rather than working it out with the formulas. I had to learn study habits since algebra was the first truly difficult (for me) subject I'd ever had. I cannot remember his name, unfortunately.
Thanks for your story, I am from South India where Ramanujan was born. We used to have a Maths textbook with Ramanujan's photo on the cover page. Ramanujan is a household name in India but people around the world are getting to know about him. I had a maths teacher who is from the same place as Ramanujan. He was damn smart, I still can't forget the way he teached us Maths ,I still remember the formula and proof technique that he taught us.
Well, those of us who have had a modicum of mathematical training, whether for engineering, physics or any of the sciences, have heard of him many times over. For someone in, say, forestry, I doubt they've heard much of Ramanujan at all. Yet again, a friend who is in the National Forestry Service actually quoted him a few years ago. That surprised me. I stand corrected. Guess that brilliant Indian got around.
Do people in these areas want to be Indians? or they want to be known as Kashmirians or Jammurian or whatever ? You cant force people and their land mass to be part of your country if they dont want to that is pure evil just like colonialism.People in Asia,Africa often blame Europeans for being overloads yet go on to be overlords of other people with less power with no shred of remorse that is pure evil.
@@vanhuvanhuvese2738 Hmm, get your facts right. See Im not antagonising thoughty2 here, as this entire video is based of a genius from India. J and K is a union territory, belonging to India. And thats a fact. Now we dont and should not expect foreigners to understand the land troubles we have with our neighbours. They just look up map of India on the internet and just pick what looks best for their video. Thats all this is. And if you find information misleading, just report it.
At 4:20 and 9:04 the map of India isn't correct and complete and i am shocked many of Indian wouldn't ask you to correct this but watch your video and write comments for else shame to them for this i disleked this video and the patriot my fellow Indians to do so for our country
Amazing! Thanks for making this video and spreading the word about this great mathematician! By the way, I have my own 'hypothesis of everything' in physics (it's about planck length), but I work as a waiter... I've published in on facebook and other places, so that no one can claim in the future, that they came with it first. I used to study physics for 2 years at uni before, but neither me or my parents had money to help me, neither loans were available in my country, so I had to do full time low skilled job... Anyway, Ramanujan seems on the scale of someone like Euler or Fermat. There is also right now a genius mathematician Indian boy, professor Bari. He has his youtube channel too. There are videos of him at 6 years old, solving math challenges given him by a MIT math professor and explicitly explaining all mental steps he goes to to solve the problems. And they're definitely not simple for most people of any age, let alone a 6 years old child...
