With the development of the Internet and the convenience of information transmission, those giants in various industries who have been sealed in the depths of the years have also begun to become popular in the Internet age. One of them is even evaluated by the majority of science and technology enthusiasts as "the closest man to God" - Nikola Tesla.
Nikola tesla
Speaking of Tesla, there are now many legendary stories about him in the media, he invented radio remote control technology, X-ray photography technology, radio, fax machine and other 1,000 patented inventions, the greatest of which is the invention of alternating current technology, directly leading the world from the steam age to the electric age. It is also because of its super high IQ and many advanced research and theories, it has been praised by the majority of netizens as "the man closest to God".
However, the protagonist of our story today is not Tesla, but another "man who can talk to God and really come into contact with God", who is the famous mathematician in Indian history, Srinivasser Ramanujan. Why do we say this about him, let's watch his legendary life together, and understand why he is said to be "a man in contact with God"!
A gifted teenager befriended mathematics
Portrait of Ramanujan
Ramanujan was born in 1887 to a declining Brahmin family in tamil Nadu, southeastern India, and a family of seven, including Ramanujan, was devout Brahmins.
As a child, Ramanujan loved to observe the sky, often asking his teacher about the length of the Earth's equator, the distance between constellations and constellations, and other "strange questions". As a result, Ramanujan's elementary school teachers and classmates always thought he was a freak, unwilling to associate with him, and all respected him.
It wasn't until Ramanujan entered secondary school at the age of 10 that he was exposed to formal mathematics for the first time, and was so passionate about mathematics that he once asked his senior classmates, "What is the highest truth of mathematics?" Seniors told him that the "Pythagorean theorem" (the Chinese "Pythagorean theorem") could be used as a representative. This caused Ramanujan to be even more interested in mathematics.
Mathematical talent began to show
Mathematician Euler's analysis of trigonometric functions
At the age of 11, he borrowed books from several university students studying at government universities living in his house and taught himself the Higher Trigonometry. At the age of 13, it was discovered that the trigonometric function could be expressed without the ratio of three sides of a right triangle, and it was later learned that a mathematician Euler had discovered the relevant formula 150 years ago.
Beginning at the age of 14, Ramanujan continued to receive honorary certificates and scholarships, and he also helped the school with the logistics of assigning 1,200 students (each with different needs) to 35 teachers. He completed every math exam in half the allotted time, and each time it was a perfect score.
When Ramanujan was 15 years old, a friend lent him a book by the British mathematician Carr, "Outline of Pure and Applied Mathematics", which contained more than 5,000 equations in the fields of mathematics such as algebra, calculus, trigonometry, geometry, etc., but there was no detailed record of the proof process in the book. Ramanujan pondered the book's more than 5,000 equations every day, proved them, and generalized more equations, leaving hundreds of pages of mathematical notes.
Suffered a blow and became an unemployed vagrant
Stills from the movie "The Knower"
Ramanujan's outstanding grades when he graduated from high school in Gombergham were described by the principal as "not enough to say that he was so good with a perfect score". But after entering the famous local Gombergonham College, he devoted all his energy to mathematical research, resulting in failure in other subjects, Ramanujan not only lost his scholarship, but also was expelled from the school, and the 18-year-old Ramanujan suffered the first major blow in his life, so he ran away from home for 3 months.
A year later, Ramanujan was admitted to the Pacaiapa Academy in Madras, but this student with excellent mathematical achievements failed twice in his 5 liberal arts courses and was eventually expelled. Ramanujan, 21, eventually became an unemployed vagrant and accepted an arranged marriage from his parents, while his wife was just a 9-year-old Indian girl.
Became the first person in Mathematics in India
Ramanujan Golden Ratio Formula and the Magic Formula for π
In order to support his family, Ramanujan had to try to find a job, and at the recommendation of a friend, he met Rao, an official of the Port Trust office of Madras, who was also a math enthusiast, admired Ramanujan very much, and supported Ramanujan to concentrate on mathematical research, leaving him to work in a pseudonymous name, but paying Ramanujan every month.
In 1911, at the age of 24, Ramanujan, with Rao's help, published his first paper in the Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society, "On Some Properties of Bernoulli Numbers", and he officially entered the circle of Indian mathematics. Ramanujan went on to publish his second paper, which contained 14 formulas for calculating pi π, the most magical of which yielded an 8-bit decimal precision for each calculation.
Ramanujan in the past few years, in the Indian mathematical circles began to make a small name, he has a record of many of his own over the years to derive the formula notes, because the Indian mathematical level is not high, his notes in the hands of many Indian mathematicians, but no one can understand.
Maxima finally meets Bole
British mathematician Hardy
Ramanujan, who was deeply lonely in the Indian mathematical community, finally asked him to write to the British mathematicians who were relatively well developed in mathematics at that time, at the suggestion of his friends. On January 16, 1913 Ramanujan wrote a letter to the English mathematician Hardy.
When Hardy received nine pieces of paper from Ramanujan, filled with mathematical formulas but not proven processes, each of which was too much like a fabrication, Hardy sought out another British mathematician, Littlewood, and after research, the two finally found that the formula given by Ramanujan seemed to be disorganized, but in fact implied a great mystery.
Hardy then invited Ramanujan to Cambridge University, but because Ramanujan was a devout Brahmin, Ramanujan could not go abroad because of his religious beliefs. Later he had a dream in which the goddess Namagiri said to him, "You can go." He decided to go to England to meet Hardy.
University of Cambridge, UK
When Ramanujan went to Cambridge University in the United Kingdom to meet with Hardy, when he took out the notebook and showed it to Hardy, Hardy was shocked, there were more than 3,000 formulas in it, about a third of which had been proved by European mathematicians for hundreds of years, and two-thirds were all new.
At Hardy's recommendation, Ramanujan entered cambridge in 1914, and the two published 28 important papers over a five-year period. Because of Ramanujan's outstanding achievements in mathematics, he became a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge University at the age of 31, and was elected as a foreign student of the Royal Society, and the first person in Asia to obtain foreign student status.
Mysterious intuition, forward thinking
Ramanujan's mathematical notes
Ramanujan suffered from tuberculosis during World War I, and after the war Ramanujan left his notebook with Hardy, and he returned to his hometown, but by this time his illness was at an advanced stage, and even so, Ramanujan continued to study mathematics, developing another 650 formulas in the last year of his life. Eventually, Ramanujan died in 1920 at the age of 33.
The last achievement of his life, mimicking the function of lambda, gave a powerful impetus to the study of the deterioration and spread of cancer cells and the movement of tsunamis using isolated wave theory. In recent years, this function may well have been used to explain some of the mysteries of black holes in the universe, and surprisingly, when Ramanujan first proposed such a function, people did not yet know what a black hole was.
What is even more incredible is that when his thick notebook was continuously studied by later generations, several of his theorems played a very important role in different fields such as particle physics, statistical mechanics, and cryptography. Not only that, but the notebook also inspired many mathematicians and led them to successfully win the Fields Medal. (Known as the Nobel Prize in mathematics)
However, many of the advanced formulas in this note before, many people, including Hardy, asked Ramanujan how to figure it out? Ramanujan replied with only one sentence: "I was told to me when I was sleeping or praying, my goddess Namagiri." "We all know that mathematics needs to be rigorously proven, but Ramanujan relies on intuition and directly gives many formulas.
Ramanujan Commemorative Stamps
Tesla once said in his autobiography: "Some knowledge actually exists in the universe for a long time, and only a few people can receive this kind of information." Regarding this kind of "natural knowledge", the Northern Song Dynasty poet Lu You also had "the article is natural, and the clever hand is occasionally obtained." " assertion. Regarding Ramanujan's magical intuition, could he really talk to the "god" and obtain more than 3,000 advanced formulas involving particle physics and statistical mechanics, and it is also possible that his "god" is a keen intuition for mathematics plus hard work on mathematical research.
So where do you think his equations for more than 3,000 unproven processes come from?
Related Reading: The Knower: The Biography of Ramanujan
Related film and television works: "The Knower", "Genius"