That was a fun read.<p>What really stuck out to me was how R failed in a bunch of other subjects except math because he wasn’t interested in them.<p>I know society and norms expect students to learn all these other subjects.<p>But what if those just aren’t interesting to someone?<p>I wonder how many geniuses we skip on because doing the chores of homework and getting through boring classes is busywork and memorization for the sake of getting an A.<p>Meanwhile, hardly anyone actually remembers anything about those topics and even the best students mostly go on to achieve only above average things.<p>My class valedictorian went on to become a doctor and while that is certainly impressive to me, there are many doctors and he practices (like almost every other doctor) and isn’t pushing the boundaries of medical science. I feel terrible writing that because I’m certainly not as smart as him, but R is just so impressive and I’m glad he got his lucky break.<p>People like R would be lost in the sea of averages because their genius would be kept shut by norms.<p>Almost every extraordinary person I read about seems like they were 1 step away from being forgotten, and got some huge universal break that boosted them.
This thread is a good example of one of the perhaps overlooked reasons it can be hard to discuss education in our societies - any attempt at making a general point, or a meta-observation of some kind, quickly gets swallowed in a massive influx of personal anecdotes about things that happened to people during their education.<p>Maybe there are other topics where the same phemonen exists. I'm not sure if off the top of my head I can think of one where it gets so intense so quickly - long, detailed, emotionally charged anecdotes immediately when school comes up! [I love a good yarn, and am not judging or belittling people for expressing themselves here, I must stress].<p>I have speculated in my comfy armchair as to why our education structures seem to make venting such a need for people. Anecdotally, there does seem to be a suggestion of some sort of lingering and powerful malaise around the whole thing, in any case.<p>I wonder if it's like an abusive relationship - the emotional work required to move on and have better relationships (i.e., different educational structures) gets so large at some stage that all you can focus on is "coping". And you're sort of stuck, and the cycle more or less continues.<p>EDIT: may I just add - I read that whole article, and am very fond of Ramanujan. He made university much harder for me when I learned about his existence, as my maths classes seemed so far removed from whatever it was he was doing.
In the Ramanujan story, a true MVP is G.H. Hardy. He read letters from some random unknown guy (a savage "native" no less!) half the world away, and took them seriously. And then organized resources to have that guy travel to England. A true MVP. All the others Ramanujan wrote to ignored him (understandably so). Such a tragedy that he died so young.
"The statements had been proved 20 years earlier by a little-known English mathematician named L.J. Rogers... Rogers was content to do his research in relative obscurity, play piano, garden and apply his spare time to a variety of other pursuits"<p>divinely inspiring
The stories of mathematicians like Srinivasa Ramanujan, who claimed to have derived complex partitions and identities in dreams, have always captivated me. It's as if their minds were tapping into some hidden reservoir of knowledge. I'm curious what drives these intuitive leaps. Was Ramanujan's brain quietly processing patterns during sleep, leveraging its default mode network in ways we're still struggling to understand? Or was it something more fundamental – an emergent property of complex neural networks, perhaps, or even a glimpse into Jung's collective unconscious?<p>I'm curious to hear how others think about this phenomenon. Do recent advances in neuroscience, AI, or cognitive psychology offer any clues about how innovators like Ramanujan access these hidden sources of insight? Or are we still stuck in the realm of "genius is mysterious"?
For people interested in learning more about Ramanujan and his Works;<p>1) <i>Mathematics Wizard Srinivasa Ramanujan : Some glimpses into his Life and Work</i> by two Indian Mathematicians Narendra Kumar Govil and Bhu Dev Sharma is a good biography with an introduction to his Mathematics and links to further resources. Good complement to Robert Kanigel's book <i>The Man Who Knew Infinity</i>.<p>2) In order to understand the fascination that Mathematicians have for Ramanujan see this and other lectures by Prof. Ken Ono who credits Ramanujan as his inspiration in becoming a Mathematician; <i>Why Does Ramanujan, "The Man Who Knew Infinity," Matter?</i> - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ynhiZJUMzA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ynhiZJUMzA</a><p>3) Mathologer on Youtube has good walkthroughs of some of Ramanujan's most famous identities (eg. 1+2+3+... = -1/12) - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mathologer+ramanujan" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mathologer+rama...</a><p>4) All of Ramanujan's published papers and unpublished notebooks can be found online at - <a href="http://ramanujan.sirinudi.org/" rel="nofollow">http://ramanujan.sirinudi.org/</a><p>PS: In the submitted article, George Andrews is wearing a Ramanujan tie :-)
The article talks about a recent paper[1] by one of the interviewees that uses McMahon partition functions for primality testing. I wonder how its running time of compares to that of the AKS primality test, and something more practical like BPSW.[2] Could it find an application in practical cryptography?<p>1. <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.06451v2" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.06451v2</a><p>2. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baillie%E2%80%93PSW_primality_test" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baillie%E2%80%93PSW_primality_...</a>
Ramanujan’s story is very interesting but I would love more Indian mathematicians and scientists to become household names. Mathematicians like Harish Chandra, C. R. Rao, Manjul Bhargava, Narendra Karmakar etc. Physicists like C. V. Raman, Satyendra Nath Bose, Meghnad Saha. Others like Har Gobind Khorana and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan too.
Ramanujan responsible for inspiring generations of mathematicians throughout the world. His life was a beautiful tragedy. One that leaves me in awe and also great inner sadness. If you come from a hardcore traditional br*hmin family, just to cross over the ocean by boat would risk you getting excommunicated. The culture which he came from makes the entire story all the more legendary. Just cutting off your topknot and forgoing the dhoti to wear a western suit. We don’t understand what he went through and what he gave up to give us his mathematics. What he had to sacrifice to practice his art.. to be.
I cannot recommend reading A Mathematician's Apology enough. It was written by GH Hardy and I think it's one of the best non-math texts out there to understand how a mathematician's brain works.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mathematician%27s_Apology" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mathematician%27s_Apology</a><p>Fairly short and beautifully written.
> Hardy, a mathematical giant in his own right, is said to have quipped that his greatest contribution to mathematics was the discovery of Ramanujan.<p>I love the Humility and Kindness in Hardy's statement.
He attributed his success to his family Goddess, claiming he had dreams of scrolls unfurling theorems against a bloodied wall.<p>"An equation for me has no meaning, unless it represents a thought of God" - Ramanujan
I often think about Ramanujan in the context of AI, if reasoning is type 2 thinking how did he (apparently) come across a lot of his ideas as intuitions
When we get to cloning people he's probably the most worthy person to get cloned first. Best chance of getting something usefult from a specific genetic makeup. You'd still probably need to make hundreds of clones to get one anywhere close to his level due to random epigenetics, even if raised in optimal environment but it's the best shot.
My education prepared me to make millions of dollars by the time I was in my mid-forties. I learned that if I take every task seriously and strive to do the absolute best I can on that task, no exceptions, regardless of how I personally felt about a subject or an assignment, I would end up being an employee that saw to it that anything I did, I did to the absolute best of my ability.<p>Not every task ended up being worth doing, but some sure did. And regardless, more important than any one individual tasks, I earned a reputation with management. This in turn resulted in a steady stream of bonuses, stock grants, and promotions. I suppose I was doubly-fortunate to have focused my efforts in the tech industry from the early 90's onward. You have to be really unlucky for nose-to-the-grindstone efforts in FAANG companies to not work out pretty well for you from 2003-ish until today.<p>With continued good health I can look forward to another 20 or 30 years of life, where I get to do whatever I want with my time because I earned so much money being content to conform to whatever my employers required of me. Nobody will remember my name, but that's okay with me, because I won't either.
> “This is a very weird fact. It’s mysterious,” said Shashank Kanade of the University of Denver. “I mean, where did the 5 come from?”<p>This is how I felt in 90% of my theoretical math classes in university.
> he came up with thousands of elegant and surprising results, often without proof. He was fond of saying that his equations had been bestowed on him by the gods<p>And somehow this guy is remembered as a 'genius'...