Ramanujan’s Garden

This is not a terrible piece on Ramanujan (though I highly recommend the book on which the movie The Man Who Knew Infinity is based on), but every time I read about him, I feel an incredible sense of awe. Ramanujan is possibly the most classic version of an “inituistic genius” in every way. His contributions and constructions are as magical as they are mysterious, and I would love to understand even 1% of what was going on in his mind.

Even reading about von Neumann (another of the giants), I still feel like he is “human” in the sense that his abilities feel like something a truly seven-sigma smart person should be able to do. Ramanujan, on the other hand, feels like a magician of the highest caliber: things just came to him (as religious visions, etc.) that were true. It’s as if I wrote down every equation appearing in a dream and then had all of them be perfectly true. (Spoiler alert: many of the equations that come to me in dreams are thoroughly nonsensical.) It’s so... unheard of and incredible, that I still struggle to even begin to understand.

Anyways, this turned into a long rant, but my point is that I believe everyone should know a little about Ramanujan to understand truly how brilliant humans can be. (And, at least in my case, be continually humbled.)