• My series on making a Newtonian telescope
  • How Leon Foucault Made Telescopes

Guy's Math & Astro Blog

Guy's Math & Astro Blog

Monthly Archives: May 2016

Movie about Ramanujan

19 Thursday May 2016

Posted by gfbrandenburg in History, Math

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

ramanujan

I recommend going to see ‘The Man Who Knew Infinity’, about the famous Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, whose originality astonished the greatest mathematicians of his day, G H Hardy and Littlewood.

It’s a historical romance rather than a documentary, so there are parts that are completely made up — like German Zeppelins bombing Cambridge University during World War 1, and off-duty British soldiers beating up Ramanujan for being a foreign draft dodger. A weird aspect is that the actors and directors don’t seem to be on the same page about the correct pronunciation of Ramanujan’s name. They mostly put the accent on the third syllable, where as far as I can tell it should be more like ruh – MAHN – uh – jahn.

However, there was such a bombing near-by during the war, and the British army did have temporary hospitals for wounded soldiers during that war, and Ramanujan did contract tuberculosis and die at the sadly early age of 32, after he had gone back home. And apparently his mother had indeed been intercepting letters to and from his wife, so they were completely cut off from each other, as the movie states.

And of course, they can’t really explain much of the mathematics – heck, I can’t understand much of anything that Ramanujan did! Even his simplest formulas are way, way over my head! Dramatizing partitions of a number was probably a wise move, since it’s one of the few things that an ordinary person might understand.

 

 

 

 

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • March 2021
  • December 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • January 2019
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • May 2018
  • March 2018
  • January 2018
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • February 2017
  • December 2016
  • September 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014

Categories

  • astronomy
  • astrophysics
  • education
  • flat
  • History
  • Hopewell Observatorry
  • Math
  • monochromatic
  • nature
  • optical flat
  • Optics
  • Safety
  • science
  • teaching
  • Telescope Making
  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Guy's Math & Astro Blog
    • Join 48 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Guy's Math & Astro Blog
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar