Most teenagers are trying to figure out how to drive a car or pass final exams. Srinivasa Ramanujan was busy verifying thousands of mathematical theorems. He was only fifteen when he found an advanced math book that contained formulas that he not only read but also tested. He worked through them until they made sense and then built his own ideas on top of them.
This was not formal training. It was an obsession.
However, he did not remain isolated. In 1903, he attended Madras University for a short time. It was a short stay, probably a formality given his unusual path. But it was enough to catch an eye.
This eye belonged to G.H. Hardy.
Hardy was a leading British mathematician at Cambridge. He recognized something rare in Ramanujan’s work. In 1914, he invited an Indian mathematician to England. Ramanujan studied at Trinity College, Cambridge. There he worked directly with Hardy. It was a meeting of two very different worlds. One was trained in strict western proof. The other brought intuition and results that felt like magic.
Together, they have changed our understanding of numbers. The rest of the story is written in the foundations of modern mathematics.
