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Title details for The Man Who Knew Infinity by Robert Kanigel - Available

The Man Who Knew Infinity

A Life of the Genius Ramanujan

by Robert Kanigel
Humphrey Bower
Audiobook
2 of 2 copies available
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2 of 2 copies available

In 1913, a young, unschooled Indian clerk named Srinivasa Ramanujan wrote a letter to G. H. Hardy, begging that pre-eminent English mathematician's opinion on several ideas he had about numbers.

Hardy, realizing the letter was the work of a genius, arranged for Ramanujan to come to England. Thus began one of the most remarkable collaborations ever chronicled.

With a passion for rich and evocative detail, Robert Kanigel takes us from the temples and teeming slums of Madras to the courts and chapels of Cambridge University, where the devout Hindu Ramanujan, "the Prince of Intuition," tested his brilliant theories alongside the sophisticated and eccentric Hardy, "the Apostle of Proof."

In time, Ramanujan's creative intensity took its toll: he died at the age of thirty-two but left behind a magical and inspired legacy that today is still being plumbed for its secrets.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    November 1, 2007

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781483071176
      • File size: 502485 KB
      • Duration: 17:26:50

  • Languages

    • English

  • Levels

    • Text Difficulty: 8-12

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Arithmetic equations in an audiobook? In Humphrey Bower's eloquent reading of this lauded 1991 biography of one of the world's most brilliant and mystifying mathematicians, spoken numbers manage not to confuse. Admittedly, being able to see them would be nice, but mathematically inclined listeners can write down the equations as Bower reads, and non-math listeners wouldn't really learn much from seeing the numbers anyway. They can join everyone else in appreciating the story of Indian genius Srinivasa Ramanujan. Bower reads with interest and command. He paces the math discussions to interest all listeners, and his command of British and Indian intonations adds color to the dialogue and quotations. Introduced with atmospheric music, this is a classy production. A.C.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      April 29, 1991
      This moving and astonishing biography tells the improbable story of India-born Srinavasa Ramanujan Iyengar, self-taught mathematical prodigy. In 1913 Ramanujan, a 25-year-old clerk who had flunked out of two colleges, wrote a letter filled with startlingly original theorems to eminent English mathematician G. H. Hardy. Struck by the Indian's genius, Hardy, member of the Cambridge Apostles and an obsessive cricket aficionado, brought Ramanujan to England. Over the next five years, the vegetarian Brahmin who claimed his discoveries were revealed to him by a Hindu goddess turned out influential mathematical propositions. Cut off from his young Indian wife left at home and emotionally neglected by fatherly yet aloof Hardy, Ramanujan returned to India in 1919, depressed, sullen and quarrelsome; he died one year later of tuberculosis. Kanigel ( Apprentice to Genius ) gives nontechnical readers the flavor of how Ramanujan arrived at his mathematical ideas, which are used today in cosmology and computer science. BOMC featured alternate; QPB alternate.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Levels

  • Text Difficulty:8-12

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