Ken Ono: The Man Who Knew Infinity

you our final presenter is a professor of mathematics at Emory University as an expert in number theory algebra and combinatorics I might have said that completely wrong can ona's recognitions include a Sloan fellowship a Packard fellowship Guggenheim Fellowship presidential career award and National Science Foundation grants Ken Ono recently served as an associate producer of the Hollywood film the man who knew infinity which is excellent you should see it about the life of mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan which I probably butchered in my apologies to anyone who knows it better and to the man himself I will see if can oh no can take us to infinity and beyond with just five minutes to do it so I have a message dear sir I beg to introduce myself to you as a clerk I've been employing my spare time to work at mathematics and I've not trod in through the conventional regular course and I'm striking out a new path what followed in this letter were astonishing mathematical formulas so otherworldly that the recipient could not help believe but they were true written in 1913 it has taken mankind one century to understand their meaning and along the way the pursuit has led to solutions of ancient mathematical mysteries breakthroughs in physics and stuff which power your smartphones and the Internet the mysterious clerk from Madras Srinivasa Ramanujan is a true story and a film based on his life the man who knew infinity came out last year in a starred Dev Patel and Jeremy Irons with this letter the impoverished Hindu Clerk Ramanujan he was self-taught in math he reached out for worlds beyond India and he introduced himself to the history of human thought Ramanujan spent his youth sitting on the cool stone floors of Hindu temples surrounded by deities with his mind wandering the cosmos of man as he built upon the contents of a shabby textbook that was his Bible he believed that his formulas were sent to him as visions from God after absorbing the letters the English professor hardy Jeremy Irons invited Ramanujan to study in Cambridge an absolutely extraordinary offer for a destitute Indian subjugated under a colonial rule together they innovated vast tracts of mathematics before Ramanujan returned to India and fragile health tragically he died at the age of 32 from a misdiagnosed illness leaving behind three and agnatic enigmatic notebooks that we are still trying to figure out today I think you've seen Ramanujan x' work have been an everlasting source of suggestion inspiring those who've gone on to win the most prestigious prizes fields medals and Nobel prizes Ramanujan symbolizes pure inspiration the sort of creative flights most often associated with musicians and and artists and poets to contemporary India he's national hero a household name his story provides modern archetype the rise from humble conditions to the world's center stage that modern-day India itself exemplifies today but what makes Ramanujan story worthy of a mass audience well first there's human interest it's the awkward friendship between the self-taught devout destitute Indian and the rigorous avowed atheist English professor and the unlikely Alliance is itself mythological it was a miracle that a letter made its way to Hardy from India and it Hardy worked out the strange contents and then recognized its brilliance and then took Ramanujan under his wings is also almost impossible to imagine for Ramanujan was an unlikely student he was a two time college dropout and it's the worst instance that I know of the damage that can be done by an inelastic educational system the story also offers an port and moral Ramanujan matters because he represents endless curiosity and untapped potential the kind that we have to believe in you see science usually advances on the work of thousands over generations fine-tuning and extending the scope of understanding but from time to time very rarely people like Ramanujan Newton and Einstein burst onto the scene propelling human thought forward what if Ramanujan had not reached out to have been taken seriously by Hardy the scientific understanding and the loss of this understanding is something that I don't think any of us could understand matters because science matters so echo echoing this criticism that the in elastic nature of Ramanujan formal schooling was awful let's remind ourselves that today our educators and on a much wider scale our policymakers are flooded with a litany of challenges and are being forced to consider frightening choices how would we recognize and nurture an outlier like Ramanujan today and the larger question is this how do we establish a movement that restores the value to the cultural and academic things that are so important to us I think that's an idea that's worth spreading March for science April 22nd [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Phi Beta Kappa

Views: 52,521

Rating: 4.9439774 out of 5

Keywords: Math, Srinivasa Ramanujan

Id: EWTPB7FbobI

Length: 6min 15sec (375 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 01 2017