Every number was a friend of mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan whose work inspired films, documentaries and plays, said Krishnaswami Alladi, a professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Florida.
Mr. Alladi in his lecture, ‘Stage productions on Ramanujan, a comparison’ at the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, to mark the 130th anniversary of the mathematician, said Ramanujan made connections between completely different fields.
If the opera ‘ Partition ’ placed very little emphasis on the joy that Ramanujan felt while he made his discoveries, then in the play ‘ A first class man ’ Ramanujan was portrayed as solely responsible for establishing many of the equations. But it was his associate G.H. Hardy who established theorems.
The movie, ‘ The man who knew infinity ’ based on the book of the same name, remains the most compelling and accurate version of Ramanujan, Mr. Alladi said.
According to him, Ramanujan’s mathematics is so startling that it invokes both awe and admiration world over.
M.S. Swaminathan, founder of the MSSRF, said Mr. Alladi’s greatest contribution to mathematics was to instill love for the subject in his students.
