Check out "The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of
the Genius Ramanujan" at the link below. Ramanujan received messages
in his dreams from Hindu gods which revealed mathematical formulas and solutions
to him. He often times had to work backwards from the solutions to the
working of the problems but was always able to do it.
It's been a while since I read the book but I don't
believe that he completed college in India yet they made him a
"reader" (professor in the USA) at Cambridge
- completely unheard of then, and now. There are mathematical geniuses
still pouring over and trying to understand his mathematics of which he left
behind volumes of it. (He died at age 30
from tuberculosis.)
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.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This biography traces the life of one of the greatest geniuses of the 20th
century, Ramanujan. This incredibly brilliant Indian mathematician, working
alone in relative obscurity and lacking the usual academic credentials, could
easily have passed unnoticed. However, with the help of a handful of friends
and the ultimate support of renowned English mathematician G.H. Hardy, his
work was brought to the attention of the world. When he died in 1920 at 32 he
had become a folk-hero in his own country. He left a rich lode of original
mathematics, which is still being mined today. This extremely well-researched
and well-written biography is a "must" addition to any library
collection. - Harold D. Shane, Baruch Coll., CUNY