The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan

G. H. Hardy 25
H. E. Littlewood 30
David Hilbert 80
S. Ramanujan 100


certainly placing Ramanujan among the best of all time. However, Hardy was totally uninterested in Ramanujan the man and recent immigrant. At no time did Hardy ever express interest in Ramanujan's life and family in southern India.
The final chapters deal with the fate of Ramanujan's work after he died. Some of it was stored away and only recently "rediscovered" and presented to the world, another amazing chapter in the life of an amazing man.
This book is a superb account of the life and times of a man whose work and insights were so incredible that no one person really understands them all. This is one of the best mathematical biographies that I have ever read.

Published in Mathematics and Computer Education, reprinted with permission.


An exploration of genius in the colonial condition ....   September 13, 1999
Wilberne PERSAUD (Jamaica)
31 out of 33 found this review helpful

Kanigel's is the first book I've read on Ramanujan. It is well put together and explores the elements of the man, South India and Cambridge that led to the "collaboration" which allowed Ramanujan to flourish and be "discovered" by the West. Mathematics and Science is Planetary in scope, whereas cultures and colonialism, idiosyncracies of Universities, constraints of poverty, all in some way deny us the fruits of genius, whom I daresay are "normally" distributed in all populations! Nurture, in the true and fullest sense of the word, allows the light to shine through. Ramanujan's letter to Hardy is a classic! It is the essence of understatement, he may have been uneducated in the purely formal sense, but he was quite aware of the world he was to be reluctantly invited to join. His gifts are rare, his powers abundantly evident, there is no use debating how much longer he may have lived, if both he and Hardy understood the difficulties of a South Indian clerk attempting to live in Cambridge. The collaboration brings into sharp relief, the genarally accepted notion that in most endeavours of man, critical mass, or an informed bouncing wall/mirror brings out the best. Does Hingis give of her best against a weak opponent? Doesn't Michael Jordon reach deep when there is half a minute and five points to score? Would Karpov have ramped up his game had Fischer allowed him a match? Ramanujan may have contributed much more had he survived even two more Summers. As it stands his contribution is so outstanding that his notebooks still give up useful gems to knowledge-hungry post-graduate students. Kanigel's book is a must read for anyone interested in the history of Mathematics, anyone interested in harnessing the powers of genius, the relationships among nature and nurture, genes and culture etc. Good companion reading would include the lives of Richard Feynman, John Maynard Keynes and anything on the Manhattan Project to name but a few.


A touching biography   July 29, 2002
Vasudevan Srinivasan (Austin, TX USA)
24 out of 24 found this review helpful

Im not too fond of biographies, but I would give this book an exception.

The life of Ramanujan is amazing and one is pushed to only awe the limits of mind. Being an Indian, I can see Robert Kanigel has given a comprehensive treatment to all facets of the life of Ramanujan - his boyhood days in small town of Kumbakonam, his obsession with Maths, his seperation from Mother and his wife, his relationship with Hardy and others, his stay in London, and his final days. Kanigel has really done a wonderful job in depicting the Brahmin house-hold of the early 1900s. One could really imagine Ramanujan with a tuft and a religious symbol on forehead, but his mind calculating 10,000 th decimal of pi.

His purely professional relations with Hardy has also been very deftly depicted. How hard the days must have been! Being a Ramanujan's biography its hard to avoid mathematical formulas - and the author justifiably includes them when necessary. But even if you do not understand them - you can just wonder at the string of symbols joined together to purport some meaning.

The narration is truly captivating. It sends an horripulating feeling to the mind, when Hardy describes the first letter of formulas as "These must be true. If they are not, nobody would have the audacity to invent it."

The final days of Ramanujan are indeed sad and emotional and also beautifuly captured in the book. Typical is the life of geniuses - the world has hard time understanding them. This book is really worth in my library.


An excellent book for people who love Science and History   February 24, 1997
10 out of 10 found this review helpful

In each field of science there are many unsung heroes whose stories are all but forgotten. Nevertheless some of these stories are astonishing and in the hands of a good author makes fscinating reading. One such story is that of Ramanujan, who was to Math what Mozart was to music. His genius was almost mystical. This book deals with his life, how came to the attention of Hardy, went to England and became one of the well known mathematicians of his time. But this book also deals with the "mystical" aspects of his genius. Strange, almost unbelievable anecdotes of how from the esoteric shadows of the east came an almost uneducated man who, isolated from the scientific world, rediscovered many of the great mathematical theorems that had been dsicovered over centuries in Europe. The book is written in a superb style. I really enjoyed reading it, and I urge everyone to read it for its sheer entertainment value


Fascinating life....bland interpretation   September 9, 2006
Norman Suicide (Taipei)
7 out of 9 found this review helpful

Kanigel offers a very "American" interpretation of both Ramanujan's Indian life and the U.K. university life he briefly led w/ G.H. Hardy at Cambridge.
The first 150 pages give exceptional detail into R's life outside Chennai (Madras) and how Hinduism permeated his entire existence. This section is outstanding. No assumptions are made and many details of Hinduism as it impacts daily life (and therefore Ramanujan's decisions) are expanded upon in great detail.
However, once the author turns his attention to the U.K. and the public school/univeristy system, there is a lengthy prurient discussion of Hardy's sexuality, among other things. It is tedious and distracting.
Finally there is little if any discussion of the mathematical concepts on which Ramanujan worked. The details, spelled out for a layman.
Kanigel clearly heeded every editor's warning, "For every equation in a book, sales drop by half". There is no explanation of mathematical notation so that it can be used later in the book to explain other ideas. This was extremely dissappointing. When reading biographies or Euler, Riemann etc, you expect some fairly detailed mathematics. Not in this book!
In short, this could have been a 200 page book, but was padded for reasons I still cannot quite figure out.