Wednesday, August 11, 2004
The Man Who Knew Ramanujan
I recently finished reading The Man Who Knew Infinity, Robert Kanigel’s superb biography of the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. Readers from the subcontinent will doubtless already know many of the details of Ramanujan’s remarkable life: of his childhood in an obscure South Indian town, of his flunking out of college, of his subsequent highly individualistic researches into analytical number theory, of his ‘discovery’ by the eminent Cambridge mathematician G. H. Hardy, of his voyage to England, of his tragic death from tuberculosis just five short years later, and of his posthumous apotheosis as perhaps the greatest ‘intuitive’ mathematician of the 20th century. Mr Kanigel does an excellent job of bringing these bare facts to life; his book is full of colour and detail, and not the least bit shy of exploring reasonably advanced mathematical territory.
What struck me most forcibly about Ramanujan’s tale, though, was a sense of how easily things could have turned out differently – either for the better (for instance, if Ramanujan’s talent had been recognized and given proper support and guidance while he was still a youth) or for the worse (for instance, if Professor Hardy had not bothered to read all the way through the letter of theorems that Ramanujan had sent him). Mr Kanigel makes the same point in his introduction to the book:
It is a story of one man and his stubborn faith in his own abilities. But it is not a story that concludes, Genius will out – though Ramanujan’s, in the main, did. Because so nearly did events turn out otherwise that we need no imagination to see how the least bit less persistence, or the least bit less luck, might have consigned him to obscurity. In a way, then, this is also a story about social and educational systems, and about how they matter, and how they can sometimes nurture talent and sometimes crush it. How many Ramanujans, his life begs us to ask, dwell in India today, unknown and unrecognized? And how many in America and Britain, locked away in racial or economic ghettos, scarcely aware of worlds outside their own?
Educational systems matter; they matter a great deal.
Perversely, in Ramanujan’s case it could be argued that the system did exactly what it was supposed to do. In a 19th-century report on the educational system in India, the British civil servant William Thackeray (no relation to the novelist, as far as I’m aware) wrote:
It is very proper that in England, a good share of the produce of the earth should be appropriated to support certain families in affluence, to produce senators, sages and heroes for the service and defense of the state; or in other words, that a great part of the rent should go to opulent nobility and gentry, who are to serve their country in Parliament, in the army, in the navy, in the departments of science and liberal professions. The leisure, independence and high ideals which the enjoyment of this rent affords has enabled them to raise Britain to pinnacles of glory. Long may they enjoy it. But in India that haughty spirit, independence and deep thought which the possession of great wealth sometimes gives ought to be suppressed. They are directly averse to our power and interest. The nature of things, the past experience of all governments, renders it unnecessary to enlarge on this subject. We do not want generals, statesmen and legislators, we want industrious husbandmen. If we wanted restless and ambitious spirits there are enough of them in Malabar to supply the whole peninsula.
In other words, the Raj educational system was designed to stamp out originality and initiative, and to produce instead an army of clerks and accountants.
But to blame all of India’s educational ills on the British Raj would be to take the easy way out. The real tragedy is that a hundred years after Ramanujan, and fifty years after Independence, nothing has changed. Our system still churns out drones by the dozen, while stifling creativity and non-traditional thought. And where would Ramanujan be, were he alive today? J. B. S. Haldane answers the question:
Today in India Ramanujan could not get even a lectureship in a rural college because he had no degree. Much less could he get a post through the Union Public Service Commission. This fact is a disgrace to India. I am aware that he was offered a chair in India after becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society. But it is scandalous that India’s great mean should have to wait for foreign recognition. If Ramanujan’s work had been recognized in India as early as it was in England, he might never have emigrated and might be alive today. We can cast the blame for Ramanujan’s non-recognition on the British Raj. We cannot do so when similar cases occur today.
What struck me most forcibly about Ramanujan’s tale, though, was a sense of how easily things could have turned out differently – either for the better (for instance, if Ramanujan’s talent had been recognized and given proper support and guidance while he was still a youth) or for the worse (for instance, if Professor Hardy had not bothered to read all the way through the letter of theorems that Ramanujan had sent him). Mr Kanigel makes the same point in his introduction to the book:
It is a story of one man and his stubborn faith in his own abilities. But it is not a story that concludes, Genius will out – though Ramanujan’s, in the main, did. Because so nearly did events turn out otherwise that we need no imagination to see how the least bit less persistence, or the least bit less luck, might have consigned him to obscurity. In a way, then, this is also a story about social and educational systems, and about how they matter, and how they can sometimes nurture talent and sometimes crush it. How many Ramanujans, his life begs us to ask, dwell in India today, unknown and unrecognized? And how many in America and Britain, locked away in racial or economic ghettos, scarcely aware of worlds outside their own?
Educational systems matter; they matter a great deal.
Perversely, in Ramanujan’s case it could be argued that the system did exactly what it was supposed to do. In a 19th-century report on the educational system in India, the British civil servant William Thackeray (no relation to the novelist, as far as I’m aware) wrote:
It is very proper that in England, a good share of the produce of the earth should be appropriated to support certain families in affluence, to produce senators, sages and heroes for the service and defense of the state; or in other words, that a great part of the rent should go to opulent nobility and gentry, who are to serve their country in Parliament, in the army, in the navy, in the departments of science and liberal professions. The leisure, independence and high ideals which the enjoyment of this rent affords has enabled them to raise Britain to pinnacles of glory. Long may they enjoy it. But in India that haughty spirit, independence and deep thought which the possession of great wealth sometimes gives ought to be suppressed. They are directly averse to our power and interest. The nature of things, the past experience of all governments, renders it unnecessary to enlarge on this subject. We do not want generals, statesmen and legislators, we want industrious husbandmen. If we wanted restless and ambitious spirits there are enough of them in Malabar to supply the whole peninsula.
In other words, the Raj educational system was designed to stamp out originality and initiative, and to produce instead an army of clerks and accountants.
But to blame all of India’s educational ills on the British Raj would be to take the easy way out. The real tragedy is that a hundred years after Ramanujan, and fifty years after Independence, nothing has changed. Our system still churns out drones by the dozen, while stifling creativity and non-traditional thought. And where would Ramanujan be, were he alive today? J. B. S. Haldane answers the question:
Today in India Ramanujan could not get even a lectureship in a rural college because he had no degree. Much less could he get a post through the Union Public Service Commission. This fact is a disgrace to India. I am aware that he was offered a chair in India after becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society. But it is scandalous that India’s great mean should have to wait for foreign recognition. If Ramanujan’s work had been recognized in India as early as it was in England, he might never have emigrated and might be alive today. We can cast the blame for Ramanujan’s non-recognition on the British Raj. We cannot do so when similar cases occur today.
