
Touched by the Goddess: On Ramanujan - benbreen
http://inference-review.com/article/touched-by-the-goddess
======
Jun8
"In another scene, Ramanujan goes to the post office to see if there are any
letters from his wife. When a dejected Ramanujan leaves the post office empty-
handed, he is approached by a group of young men in military uniform.
Ramanujan is mocked, kicked, pushed to the ground, and his face left bloodied.
This event never occurred. There was not a single instance when Ramanujan was
physically abused because of racial prejudice."

Why do you think this scene was manufactured? Should it be chalked up to
trying to make reality more interesting or to an effort to deliver themes
aligned with audience expectations?

This convenient story seems to be picked up by a lot of people who have not
read the book, e.g. "World War I throws the campus into chaos and exposes
Ramanujan to more pointed racism." ([http://www.filmjournal.com/reviews/film-
review-man-who-knew-...](http://www.filmjournal.com/reviews/film-review-man-
who-knew-infinity)) or "...what we received instead was a shameful expose of
twentieth century racism, an exploration of otherness, professional jealousy
and small mindedness" ([http://teachingmathsscholars.org/news/the-maths-
scholars-sch...](http://teachingmathsscholars.org/news/the-maths-scholars-
scheme-reviews-the-man-who-knew-infinity))

In fact I've always found Ramanujan's story to be an excellent example of
open-mindedness and the meritocratic approach to judging people.

~~~
deepnotderp
Drama, that's all. For a movie about math, there was pretty much zero math the
entire time...

~~~
Retra
It wasn't about math, but the mythology of a mathematician.

------
13of40
I coincidentally watched the movie last night. Overall, I recommend it. As a
nerd, I felt they were a little bit light on the details of what his work
meant. Unfortunately, unlike with computer movies, they couldn't create a
tangible mock-up ("this is Unix, I know this...", "I'm hacking a Gibson") so
it felt like there was a vacuum in the room every time they stressed how
important the contents of his notebooks were but said nothing about what they
actually contained. There was also a little bit of preachiness around one
character being an atheist and that being a kind of bad thing, so heads up.

For a good after-movie read, someone also did a more detailed write-up of his
wife's life, here:
[http://www.imsc.res.in/~rao/ramanujan/newnow/janaki.pdf](http://www.imsc.res.in/~rao/ramanujan/newnow/janaki.pdf)

~~~
webkike
There was a really good play I saw about Ramanujan's life that actually talked
about the mathematics part. It was a fictional piece of work but quite
enjoyable. It was called A Disappearing Number

------
dharma1
Great blog post. I really enjoyed the film, and of course an incredible story.

Stephen Wolfram also has a fascinating, in-depth blog post on Ramanujan -
[http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2016/04/who-was-
ramanujan/](http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2016/04/who-was-ramanujan/)

I wonder if we'll ever understand how intuition like this really works in the
brain.

~~~
kr4
You may like reading this [0]. each one of us has an infinite source of
creative power mostly dormant. For some like Ramanujan, it's awakened with a
greater degree. The book goes into steps to awaken it and I can attest to it
that with quality meditation and perseverance, this can be gradually awakened
and channelized. A sincere practitioner starts to get experiences (verifying
he's onto something) within a month of regular, quality practice.

This can be awakened by meditation, devotion (like in case of Ramanujan) or by
selfless work. All of them falls under Yoga, which means "to unite" with your
true self, the infinitely powerful, whose nature is self-existence, knowledge
and bliss.

0: [https://www.amazon.com/Kundalini-Untold-Story-
Himalayan/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/Kundalini-Untold-Story-
Himalayan/dp/0994002793)

~~~
dharma1
Thanks, will have a look at the book. If it is an easily repeatable process
though, I wonder why we don't have more Ramanujans? Is there a genetic
component to it?

------
shiven
If you like reading up on such topics, I strongly recommend S. Chandrasekhar's
"Truth and Beauty: Aesthetics and Motivation in Science".

------
ronnier
Why do we keep hearing so much about Ramanujan? Of the greatest
mathematicians, is he even in the top 10? 20? 30?

~~~
whowalrus
I'm not sure how one would go about compiling an objective list of the top 10
or 20 or 30 mathematicians (which would be required to answer your second
question), but to answer your first question - we probably keep hearing about
him because he was undeniably a good (if not great) mathematician and that his
story is both inspiring (or feel-good) and tragic at the same time. We like
narratives, and his life story is a narrative that is almost "magical" (to
quote Steven Wolfram's blog post on him, "Will there ever be another
Ramanujan? I don’t know if it’s the legend of Ramanujan or just a natural
feature of the way the world is set up, but for at least 30 years I’ve
received a steady stream of letters that read a bit like the one Hardy got
from Ramanujan back in 1913 ... Are these numerical facts significant? I don’t
know. Wolfram|Alpha can certainly generate lots of similar facts, but without
Ramanujan-like insight, it’s hard to tell which, if any, are significant."
[1])

[1] [http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2016/04/who-was-
ramanujan/](http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2016/04/who-was-ramanujan/)

