
Papers of Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920), mathematician - mgdo
https://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/library/wren-digital-library/modern-manuscripts/ramanujan/
======
gjm11
It may be worth clarifying that this isn't "papers of" as in "scholarly
publications in journals by", but as in "pieces of paper associated with";
these are nice high-resolution scans of a box of papers at Trinity College,
Cambridge relating to Ramanujan. Letters between other mathematicians about
Ramanujan's work; some handwritten manuscripts by Ramanujan himself (including
the famous "Lost Notebook"); a passport photo of Ramanujan.

Definitely interesting for Ramanujan enthusiasts, but if you're looking for
(say) his papers with Hardy about partitions, numbers of prime factors of
"typical" numbers, etc., then this isn't the place to go.

~~~
theoh
It's a standard expression. Googling the phrase "papers of" brings up mostly
hits for archives of documents with the description "Papers of <name>" where
<name> is someone noteworthy.

~~~
saagarjha
Unfortunately with mathematicians and scientists the term "paper" is
overloaded because they write academic papers, which leads to ambiguity.

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jzl
Something that can't be said about very many people -- Ramanujan has an
integer named after him: 1729.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1729_(number)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1729_\(number\))

This is hands-down my favorite math story:

 _It is known as the Hardy-Ramanujan number, after an anecdote of the British
mathematician G. H. Hardy when he visited Indian mathematician Srinivasa
Ramanujan in hospital. He related their conversation:_

 _I remember once going to see him when he was ill at Putney. I had ridden in
taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull
one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavourable omen. "No," he replied, "it
is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum
of two cubes in two different ways."_

~~~
escherplex
Remember _1729_ being referenced in the 2015 film _The Man Who Knew Infinity_
which was essentially a Hardy retrospective on his relationship with
Ramanujan. YouTube actually has a 25 sec. clip of that scene from the movie

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n4y6uFdcOM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n4y6uFdcOM)

~~~
glandium
And the corresponding Numberphile video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzjaDKVC4iY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzjaDKVC4iY)

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calhoun137
I recently started working through his collected papers a few months ago and
have a really nice hardcover. Wow they are so hard!! Also have read every
volume of his lost notebooks back in college. Sometimes when I start a new
paper I think: why would anyone ever think of that, who cares anyway, and what
does that even mean.

It takes about 10 minutes to read one line. But its worth it cause he was able
to create his own path and what he does with formal power series and summing
divergent series is staggering to behold

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sbradford26
His life story is incredibly interesting. I also think that it is a lesson to
us all that someone doesn't have to be formally trained in a field to make
major contributions to it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan)

~~~
s_dev
> I also think that it is a lesson to us all that someone doesn't have to be
> formally trained in a field to make major contributions to it.

I don't think it serves that lesson at all but rather an extraordinary
minority of very talented indidvuals can bypass such training/education in
extremely rare circumstances. He's a Mozart and education and training is
still necessary for the vast majority of people.

~~~
gp7
Mozart had extensive education and training????

~~~
s_dev
Nope -- he was a prodigy from the earliest age. He was composing music at the
age of 5.

Thats kindergarten. You might be thinking of other composers who are regarded
as his equals -- Mozarts brain was just tuned for music in a way ours are not.

~~~
yesenadam
_He was composing music at the age of 5._

I would have been composing at 5 had my father been a
musician/composer/teacher! (I did start piano at 4, in a not-particularly-
musical household) As it was, I remember hearing that when I was about 9, and
thought "Oh well, it's too late for me" \- which is a shame! But his first
compositions weren't great. You write that like it's some super-human feat or
something.

"he was a prodigy from the earliest age. ... Mozarts brain was just tuned for
music in a way ours are not." I don't know why people talk like that. Maybe as
an excuse for not achieving great things themselves, or even having to try.

There was a Hungarian guy who decided to train his 3 daughters to be chess
players, to see just how good they could be given a proper training. The 2nd
strongest sister became world champion. The strongest one never played in
women-only events, she was too strong, and turned out to be the strongest
woman chess player of all time, by a long way. (i.e. Susan and Judit Polgar) I
don't think it was because their brains were 'tuned for it'. They just had the
perfect environment.

~~~
s_dev
Heres another way to test your hypothesis that Mozarts genius can be credited
to his training and advantage of a musically literate family.

If we applied the same training and familial advantage to many kids would any
of them turn out like Mozart?

I'd argue they probably wouldn't because his brain was fundamentally different
and that made the difference.

If he didn't have those advantages would he have been discovered as a prodigy
as quickly and as early? Maybe not.

~~~
throwawaymath
Your proposal can't actually test the hypothesis because it can't (reasonably)
be done. We don't know how many children were similarly situated and did not
turn out like Mozart.

It could be that many musicians with a similar background were/are similarly
as good as Mozart, and Mozart's music is especially famous for its cultural
appeal and his father's aggressive "marketing" to royalty. There are many
reasons one particular musician's musicical legacy can succeed aside from raw
skill and creativity, much like the success of a company has a nontrivial luck
component.

It could also be that he really was extraordinary above and beyond his
family's musical background. Like most discussions about the nature versus
nurture of genius, we can't really assert one thing or another.

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wrong_variable
Ramanujan was born too early. I wish he was alive in today's independent and
richer india, he could have achieved so much more.

~~~
adamc
And yet, we are all born in just the right moment. Just by existing, Ramanujan
opened eyes as to what people from "backward" (colonial) areas were capable
of. While his own life might have been better if he had been born now, his
existence helped improve many other lives. Just reading about him as a kid
inspired me. And I'm just a white dude from the suburbs.

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rofo1
I recommend reading "The Man Who Knew Infinity". It's really devastating the
way he died.

It seems that a lot of math geniuses died premature. Eisenstein, Abel, Galois,
Riemann..

I've read some of his work.. there are formulas appearing out of nowhere, like
magic. He said that he saw them in his dreams.

He had access to 1 book, basically, a collection of math theorems and that's
it. Only 900 pages (IIRC) and the rest of the stuff he discovered (and re-
discovered in some cases) on his own.

Unparalleled genius!

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abc_lisper
Before you make grand suggestions of what his genius could be, you would be
well-afforded to read this

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

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WhitneyLand
This is fantastic, I’m going to choose something that would make a nice large
print to frame for a wall in my house.

A trend on home improvement shows is to print out old patent drawings and hang
them as decoration. It always seemed so off putting necause most people never
bothered to choose based on work that was intesterimg or meaningful to them,
or even know what the patent was about.

For me this feels the opposite, so many personal connections...The subject
matter, respect for his talent and contributions, the person, and in huge part
the inspiration of being to achieve in the face of long odds and adversity.

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TallGuyShort
I actually just read a bit about him in Matt Parker's "Things to Make and Do
in the Fourth Dimension", which I highly recommend. I've always enjoyed math
and long regretted not taking more math classes for fun at university, and
this is a really fun tour to lots of aspects of math I haven't had occasion to
think about much before, including some of Srinivasa's talents for number
theory.

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happy-go-lucky
Ramanujan did what made him happy. He was good at what he did. Maybe he was so
absorbed in his work that he hadn't had time to think about his circumstances.
He was a natural.

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emodendroket
There are millions of people who have done a lot of piano practice since they
were young; how many of them are comparable talents to Mozart? The whole
10,000 hours thing is overhyped. For every Wayne Gretzky there's countless
other kids just as obsessed with hockey who were not good enough for the NHL.

~~~
yesenadam
I didn't know anything about Wayne Gretzy so I looked him up.. Started at 2,
trained with siblings by father on home hockey rink..

But sure, not everybody can be No. 1, it would be silly to expect millions of
'talents comparable to Mozart', there can't be countless people in the NHL
etc.

So... you sound disappointed, maybe. Did you put in '10,000 hours' and it
didn't work out? I don't know much about the '10,000 hours' theory, less about
how you think it's overhyped. People often have an idea that it's an
unpleasant ordeal, all that practice, but if it's what you love, it's a
pleasure. (I enjoyed every minute) Sure, I believe people have different
levels of.. _how far they can go_ , but its importance is vastly overrated.
Like much more important to me seems _how much you enjoy practising_ , whether
art, music, sport, anything, whether you love doing it more than anything, and
do it for decades.

I've often thought that if I'd grown up living in a town, a popular kid etc I
would have turned out 'untalented' in anything, except chatting and being
popular; but I grew up fairly isolated on a farm, pre-internet, and so played
piano a lot, read a lot etc. And I wasn't so happy, so playing piano was a
great joy. Maybe if I'd been happy already, I wouldn't have 'needed' to play
piano so much. I had very low self-esteem...thanks to bullying at home and at
school, so...it was wonderful to escape to the beautiful world of music. I
think factors like that, that influence how much you practice, how many hours
you put in (though I never thought of it like that), how much you love doing
it, are much more important than differences of natural ability.

~~~
saiya-jin
It's a self-enhancing loop - you enjoy something because it comes naturally,
be it sport or mental activity, so you keep doing it, find joy at improving
yourself, competing with others etc. Now imagine the opposite, the results are
exactly... opposite.

We all have high potential, most of us never come closer to reaching it 100%,
but to think we are all equal in our skills from birth is a bit naive and
definitely not true, as experienced by probably everybody during their
lifetime.

Life ain't fair since the start, we can work hard at overcoming our limits,
and that's all great. But so far if 2 people put in same amount of effort, the
ones with better genes always wins.

~~~
emodendroket
Right... are there other people who could have run as fast as Usain Bolt if
they'd devoted themselves to it? Certainly. Could _anyone_ have done so if
they'd copied his routine? No.

