The tank, a large ritual pool, opposite the Parthasarathy Temple, the central religious shrine of the Triplicane district of Madras. It was in Triplicane, down the street from the tank, that Ramanujan lived in the period before he left for England.
The first of nine pages of mathematical results Ramanujan sent G. H. Hardy from India in 1913. Syndics of Cambridge University Library
A more typical page of Ramanujan’s first letter to Hardy. Syndics of Cambridge University Library
Sophia (previous) and Isaac Hardy, G. H. Hardy’s parents. She was upright, pious, and stern. He was a “White Knight,” who “never uttered an unkind word.” Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge
G. H. Hardy, a little before he heard from Ramanujan, at the time he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. “His face was beautiful,” C. P. Snow once wrote of him, “with high cheek bones, thin nose, spiritual and austere.” Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge
Hardy’s sister, Gertrude. She called her brother “Harold,” his middle name. Neither of them ever married. Both spent their lives in academic settings. Both were enchanted by intellect and contemptuous of religion. Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge
The “Mt. Pleasant” cottages, in one of which Hardy lived as a child, across the road from Cranleigh School. The separate entrance nook, at the extreme right of this recent photo, is new.
Cranleigh School, conceived as a “middle class school,” in a recent photo. Hardy’s father was drawing teacher. His mother directed the preparatory school across the road. Hardy himself attended for a few years, but by the time he was thirteen had left for a more academically challenging school.
Flint and Stone. A court at Winchester School, a traditional English public school going back to the fourteenth century. Hardy hated the place and apparently never returned for a visit.
J. E. Littlewood, “Senior Wrangler,” 1905. That honor went to the man scoring highest on the notorious Mathematical Tripos exam, and in English academic circles was about like being named All-American, Rhodes Scholar, and Bachelor of the Year all at once. It was Littlewood to whom Hardy turned when Ramanujan’s mystifying letter arrived from India. Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge
E. H. Neville, Hardy’s emissary to Ramanujan. He arrived in Madras in the winter of 1913 to give a series of lectures. But Hardy had given him an additional task—to bring Ramanujan to England. Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge
Long the first destination in England of most Indian students: 21 Cromwell Road, in the South Kensington district of London, shown here in a recent photo. Ramanujan was there in mid-April 1914.
Ramanujan’s introduction to the English home: 113 Chestertown Road, in a recent photo. E. H. Neville and his wife bought it in 1913, and Ramanujan lived here for two months in 1914.
New Court, Trinity College, where Hardy lived during the time he knew Ramanujan. Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge
The Wren Library, Trinity College, in a recent photo taken from the Backs. Hardy lived on the second floor of the building to the right, rooms extending over the gate into New Court.
Bishop’s Hostel. From about 1915 to 1917, Ramanujan lived in the building closest to the camera. From the window with the strong reflection on the second floor (directly over the ghostly figure below) Ramanujan could see the spired steeple atop the college dining hall. But his rigid vegetarianism meant that he never ate there with other Trinity College scholars. Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge
The last page of a letter Hardy wrote to Ramanujan in February 1918, while Ramanujan was sick and in the hospital, about their current work. Master and fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge
A. S. Ramalingam, an engineer whom Ramanujan met in the days after he arrived in England. Three years later, Ramalingam visited him at Matlock, a tuberculosis sanatorium, where his friend’s emaciated condition and finicky eating habits left him worried. Ragami’s Collections, Madras, South India
The Indian stamp issued in 1962 to honor Ramanujan.
“Gometra,” the house off Huntington Road, in the Chetput section of Madras, where Ramanujan died. Ragami’s Collections, Madras, South India
P. S. Chandrasekar, Ramanujan’s physician back in India. Ramanujan’s death, he wrote in his diary the following day, was “a tragedy too deep for tears.” Ragami’s Collections, Madras, South India
Hardy in his prime. “To sit that way,” someone once said of him, “you have to have been educated in a public school.” (He was.) Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge
A photo taken in 1941, snapped by someone from The Picture Post, as Hardy watched a rugby game between Cambridge and Oxford. He was 64 years old—and after a seemingly endless youth, looked it. Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge
Photo by Aaron Levin
ROBERT KANIGEL, winner of the Grady-Stack Award for science writing, is also author of The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency, Apprentice to Genius: The Making of a Scientific Dynasty, and High Season: How One French Riviera Town Has Seduced Travelers for Two Thousand Years. THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY was one of five finalists for the 1991 Los Angeles Times Book Award in the Science category. Robert Kanigel’s articles, essays, and reviews have been published in many magazines, including The New York Times Magazine, Civilization, Psychology Today, Science 85, Health, and The Sciences. He reviews regularly for The New York Times Book Review and the Los Angeles Times. He is a professor of science writing at MIT, where he directs the Graduate Program in Science Writing. He has also taught at the University of Baltimore’s Yale Gordon College of Liberal Arts and at Johns Hopkins University. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Also by Robert Kanigel
APPRENTICE TO GENIUS:
The Making of a Scientific Dynasty
THE ONE BEST WAY:
Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency
HIGH SEASON:
How One French Riviera Town Has Seduced Travelers for Two Thousand Years
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Notes
I have supplied notes for most quotations and for most statements of fact that the inquiring reader might be moved to question.
I have not usually supplied citations for amply documented historical events, such as World War I. Information about South Indian towns and regions, population, geography, climate, temples, agriculture, literacy statistics, and the like is largely drawn from standard gazetteers, published both in Ramanujan’s time and in the years since, including the Imperial Gazetteer, Madras Presidency, 1908, and various district gazetteers.
For many of the book’s supporting characters, I have not usually cited biographical information from the Dictionary of National Biography, from the series of published biographical memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, or from similar standard biographical references.
In the case of unpublished letters, I have tried to note the college or other institution in whose files they may be found, or the person who supplied them to me.
References to Hardy’s Collected Papers are to volume 7 unless indicated otherwise; those to P. K. Srinivasan are to volume 1 of Ramanujan Memorial Number, unless indicated otherwise. Those to Ragami, the pen name of T. V. Rangaswami, carry no page number but are based on informal translations from the Tamil of his book Ramanujan, the Mathematical Genius, by V. Anantharaman and his wife Malini, of Baltimore. The “Reading Manuscript” refers to the original version of E. H. Neville’s broadcast talk on Ramanujan, now stored at the University of Reading, in England.
Much of the information contained in the Family
Record is ambiguous, and I have referred to it only when, in full context, the evidence seems clear.
Information drawn from written materials and personal interviews has been supplemented by personal observation and informal conversation in England and India.
PROLOGUE
“your wonderful countryman Ramanujan.” S. R. Ranganathan, 80–81.
“was near to religion.” Oxford Magazine, 2 January 1948.
“a thought of God.” S. R. Ranganathan, 88.
CHAPTER ONE
September 1887. Family Record.
And so widely observed. Slater, Southern India, 121.
“wet skull.” Coimbatore District Gazetteer, 1966.
Teppukulam Street. Interview, T. V. Rangaswami.
Smallpox incident. Family Record; Ragami; P. K. Srinivasan, Margosa is also known as neem.
case study in the damning statistics. Births and deaths in Family Record.
case of itching and boils. Family Record.
he scarcely spoke. Ragami.
Atshara Abishekam. Ragami.
bristled at attending. Family Record.
Ramanujan was fond of asking. Seshu Iyer, 81.
crush him to pieces. Family Record.
shuffled between schools. Family Record.
arms folded in front of him. Ragami.
loan dispute. Interview, T. V. Rangaswami.
bounced back to his maternal grandparents. Family Record.
the family enlisted a local constable. Family Record.
Back in Kumbakonam by mid-1895. Family Record.
a small courtyard. Padfield, 14; Hemingway, Tanjore District Gazetteer.
Mahammakham festival. T. R. Rajagopalan, 34; Hemingway, Tanjore District Gazetteer, supplies 1897 as a festival year.
three-quarters of a million pilgrims. Slater, Southern India, 117.
its water level was said to rise several inches. Urwick, 68.
seventy-two-bed hospital. Imperial Gazetteer, Madras Presidency, 1908.
Rice growing. Interview, J. M. Victor. See also Hemingway, Tanjore District Gazetteer.
little room in which to graze. Hemingway, Tanjore District Gazetteer.
that same number of villages. Imperial Gazetteer, Madras Presidency.
Kumbakonam saris and silk. Interviews in Kumbakonam, especially with R. Viswanathan, headmaster, Town School, and with cloth merchants.
two thousand small looms. Imperial Gazetteer, Madras, 1908.
could cost as much as a hundred rupees. Hemingway.
a year’s income to many poor families. For example, Compton, 164–165, pictures five annas per day as a typical wage for unskilled labor (16 annas = 1 rupee). Fuller, 63, says field laborers could be hired for two or three pence a day, the English pence being equal to an anna. A more recent South Indian district gazetteer, looking back, gives the average agricultural wage between 1901 and 1912 as three rupees, eight annas per month, or again something like three annas per day. Imperial Gazetteer, 1908, also gives the going rate for unskilled labor at three annas per day (with skilled labor worth seven or eight annas per day). Thus, if we figure three hundred working days a year at, say, four annas per day, we get about seventy-five rupees as a representative year’s income.
normally the husbands. Slater, Southern India, 119.
Clerk’s life. Based on interviews in Kumbakonam.
Srinivasa was good at appraising fabrics. K. R. Rajagopalan, 4.
Indian father’s role. See Carstairs, 67–69.
“Very quiet.” Bharathi, 51.
“weightless.” Nandy, 102.
reminders to keep up the house. P. K. Srinivasan, 170.
Ramanujan wrote his mother. Ibid., 168.
Goats and Tigers. Interview, M. Vinnanasan, Kumbakonam. Janaki, in P. K. Srinivasan, 171, says Ramanujan and his mother played the “15 points game,” another name for Goats and Tigers. A recent Salem District gazetteer refers to a game, called Pulikatlam, which may be the same thing.
“a shrewd and cultured lady.” Seshu Iyer, 81. Other information about Ramanujan’s mother and her family is derived from biographical material in Port Trust File and interviews with S. Sankara Narayanan, K. Bhanumurthi, Janaki, and others.
managed a choultry. Interview, T. V. Rangaswami.
Komalatammal fed him his yogurt. This picture drawn largely from interview with K. Bhanumurthi.
into the principal’s office. P. K. Srinivasan, 85.
“An exceptionally gifted lady.” Ibid., 114.
Caste system. See Thurston; Mayo; Bhattacharaya; Fuller; Padfield; Compton; M. N. Srinivas.
to secure divine grace. See, for example, Chopra et al.
Brahmin families … would pull over to the side of the road. Fuller, 147. Interview, A. Saranathan.
Hindu eating practices. Fuller, 147. Numerous interviews.
that gave food a reddish cast reminiscent of blood. Interview, A. Saranathan, Kumbakonam. “If I see meat, I begin to vomit.”
“As the child learned …” Carstairs, 67.
a fastidiousness about Hindu life. See Carstairs, 80.
“Asceticism and mysticism …” In Singer, 8.
“Simple living and high thinking.” Interview, T. S. Bhanumurthy.
of 650 graduates of the University of Madras. Cited in M. N. Srinivas, 102.
“a language made by lawyers and grammarians.” Quoted in Slater, Southern India, 132.
distinct from … Hindi. G. Ramakrishna et al., 459.
boasted a verse form reminiscent of ancient Greek. Slater, Southern India, 136.
almost twenty million people. Thurston, 122.
11 percent of Tamil Brahmins literate. Cited by M. N. Srinivas, 179.
Town High School. Interview, R. Viswanathan, the current headmaster. See also “History of Our School,” in Centenary Celebration Souvenir.
partial to impromptu strolls between classes. “My Reminiscences,” R. Kandaswamy Moopanar, in Centenary Celebration Souvenir.
coming to him for help. S. R. Ranganathan, 61.
“But is zero divided by zero also one?” S. R. Ranganathan, 105.
Boarders. P. K. Srinivasan, 84.
Loney’s Trigonometry. S. R. Ranganathan, 105. Most likely, according to Richard Askey, this was only part 1 of the two-volume text.
learned from an older boy. Madras Port Trust.
understand trigonometric functions. Seshu Iyer, 82.
to any number of decimal places. Ibid.
finish in half the allotted time. Ibid.
solve them at a glance. P. K. Srinivasan, 84.
Ramanujan did Ganapathi Subbier’s job. P. K. Srinivasan, 104. The current headmaster, R. Viswanathan, gives the number of students in the school at about one thousand. N. Govindaraja Iyengar, quoted in P. K. Srinivasan, puts the figure at fifteen hundred.
deserved higher than the maximum possible marks. P. K. Srinivasan, 121.
Sarangapani Temple. See T. R. Rajagopalan, 36; G. Ramakrishna et al., 258; Das, 135; Balasubrahmanyan, 196.
temple built by Nayak kings. Das, 137.
fall asleep in the middle of the day. Ragami, “Ramanujan, ‘A Gift From Heaven,’ ” Indian Express, 19 December 1987.
Once a year during the years he was growing up. Seshu Iyer, 82. Interviews, at the temple, with S. Govindaraja Battachariar and P. Vasunathan. For more on
Uppiliapan Koil see Das, 143.
Sacred thread ceremony. Padfield, 63.
Moonlight walk to Nachiarkovil. S. R. Ranganathan, 66.
God, zero, and infinity. Ibid., 84.
“Immensely devout.” Ibid., 73.
“A true mystic.” Ibid., 88.
deity of the anthill. Whitehead, 15.
“Brahminical Hinduism is here a living reality.” Hemingway.
“as Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s are to the other churches of London.” Urwick, 72.
Rameswaram. See G. Ramakrishna et al., 383.
Hindu deities. See Das; Friedhelm Hardy, “Ideology and Cultur
al Contexts of the Srivaishnava Temple,” in Stein, 119; Fuller.
One contemporary English account. Fuller, 160.
“fusion of village deities …” Chopra et al.
direct them toward something higher and finer. V. Subramanyam, a member of Narayana Iyer’s family in Madras, offers a delightful metaphor: Consider an architect’s drawing, whose arcane visual language might represent a masterpiece. One ignorant of that language may, as he examines the drawing, be unable to see the genius it embodies. And yet, he can appreciate the care and reverence with which the drawing is unrolled, handled, and preserved, perhaps be inspired to search out its hidden meaning. Likewise, a stone deity.
to enter a trance. S. R. Ranganathan, 13.
a bizarre murder plot. P. K. Srinivasan, 98.
speak through her daughter’s son. S. R. Ranganathan, 13.
CHAPTER TWO
It first came into his hands. Seshu Iyer and Ramachandra Rao, xii. But S. R. Ranganathan, 19, says it was an “elderly friend.”
“not in any sense a great one.” Hardy, Ramanujan, 2.
Tripos. See chapter 4.
G. S. Carr. Hardy, Ramanujan, 3. Carr, iv. Cambridge University records.
from his desk in Hadley. Carr, x.
first statement on the first page. Ibid., 33.
“I have, in many cases …” Ibid., iv.
“his methods.” Littlewood, Miscellany, 87.
“Through the new world thus opened to him …” Seshu Iyer and Ramachandra Rao, xii.
Government College. Hemingway, Tanjore District Gazetteer. Imperial Gazetteer, Madras Presidency, 1908. Government College Calendar for 1975–76, part B. bridge today spanning the river. T. V. Rangaswami, in an interview, claims that during Ramanujan’s time there was a feeble footbridge across the river, perhaps constructed from palmyra palms. But Government College Calendar, 5, records the building of the bridge only in 1944, replacing a ferry service.
a hostel for seventy-two students. Hemingway, Tanjore District Gazetteer.
“College regulations could secure his bodily presence.” Neville, “Ramanujan” (Nature 149), 292.
“He was quite unmindful.” P. K. Srinivasan, 122. See also S. R. Ranganathan, 20.
The Man Who Knew Infinity Page 48
