A biopic about Srinivas Ramanujan (born 1887), the story had to mostly stick to facts. But there was enough drama in Ramanujan's life, not to mention the dramatic mathematical formulae he conjured one after another. Liberties have been taken about relative ages of people involved but that seems to help in keeping the focus on his life and mathematics. Only a little discussion of actual mathematics ensures that people will not get repelled by it. There is enough broad-stroke discussion to try to give the general audience a rough understanding of what Ramanujan managed despite troubling conditions.
At one point Hardy says: 'We can not converse in Tamil', to which Ramanujan replies: 'But you would want me to converse in English'. All the characters do use English in the movie, and the retort is ironic because Dev Patel playing Ramanujan does not speak Tamil.
The balance of proof (necessity of) and intuition comes out nicely. Ramanujan wants to run away with intuition but Hardy would like to reign him for the sake of concrete progress within Ramanujan's life-time. Intuition, or drawing together diverse facts subconsciously, happens best when you are at ease. Ramanujan though, seems to have managed it despite troubles of all colors. I guess it is the focus that he could muster would have played a large part.
Its a pity that a journey through the lost notebook can not be shown to all like Indiana Jones going after the lost arc. But I did feel after seeing the movie that it would be fun to dabble again a bit in Pure Maths. The abstract joy of even rediscovering connections known for a long time is unparalleled.
The recent - and continuing - story of Mochizuki's work on the abc conjecture tells us how the world has drawn away from purely intuition based works. Clearly Mochizuki would have had intuitions about his Frobenioids, but he had to also put together a proof for his solution. No more isolated romanticism as the world is too connected. Or is it?
The Man Who Knew Infinity (2015) (7/10)
At one point Hardy says: 'We can not converse in Tamil', to which Ramanujan replies: 'But you would want me to converse in English'. All the characters do use English in the movie, and the retort is ironic because Dev Patel playing Ramanujan does not speak Tamil.
The balance of proof (necessity of) and intuition comes out nicely. Ramanujan wants to run away with intuition but Hardy would like to reign him for the sake of concrete progress within Ramanujan's life-time. Intuition, or drawing together diverse facts subconsciously, happens best when you are at ease. Ramanujan though, seems to have managed it despite troubles of all colors. I guess it is the focus that he could muster would have played a large part.
Its a pity that a journey through the lost notebook can not be shown to all like Indiana Jones going after the lost arc. But I did feel after seeing the movie that it would be fun to dabble again a bit in Pure Maths. The abstract joy of even rediscovering connections known for a long time is unparalleled.
The recent - and continuing - story of Mochizuki's work on the abc conjecture tells us how the world has drawn away from purely intuition based works. Clearly Mochizuki would have had intuitions about his Frobenioids, but he had to also put together a proof for his solution. No more isolated romanticism as the world is too connected. Or is it?
The Man Who Knew Infinity (2015) (7/10)
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