21 Dec, 2021

Yesterday, the National Museum of Mathematics MoMath held a live video session called “Starring Math”. In this session, three distinguished mathematicians discussed the life of the prodigious mathematician Ramanujan and the movie about Ramanujan’s life The man who knew infinity with the director of the movie Mathew Brown.

The mathematicians on the panel were Fields medalist Manjul Bhargava, long-time Ramanujan evangelist and University of Virginia professor Ken Ono, and Cornell university applied mathematics professor Steven Strogatz.

It was an honor for me to listen to the panel live.

There were goose-bump moments, for example, when the panel discussed the communication between Ramanujan and his Cambridge mentor G.H.Hardy.

Snippets of Ramanujan’s letters were shown:

followed by Hardy’s reaction:

Hardy’s famous reaction talks not just about the genius of Ramanujan, but also of the humility of Hardy and of the beauty of mathematics.