THE BURDEN OF GENIUS – WHY RAMANUJAN INSPIRES ART
By Shourin Roy

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety nine percents perspiration, or so someone said. Possibly true but more I suspect, for its feel good quality than anything else. A statement that really does not do credit to Albert Einstein’s Annus Mirabilis Papers published in 1905 that laid the foundation of modern day physics. Einstein was barely 25 at that time. In a single stroke, he had posited the theories of Brownian motion, special relativity, and the photo-electric effect. We respect geniuses, even though they suffer misunderstanding, precisely for the reason that they never seem to sweat when they come out with work that introduces a paradigm shift in the way we look at life. Just think about it; at the age of 25 years, Einstein’s work laid the foundation of modern day physics. How much perspiration do you think Einstein broke out in, at that tender age?

Geniuses are people at the age of 10, composing concertos, attaining grandmaster norms in chess, mastering a language, and coming up with explanations as to why the number 1729 is special. Another common characteristic is that they fail in academic excellence, just like Einstein, who disappointed his father by not making it as an electrical engineer and who suffered through most of his school education by failing to make the grades. In that vein, we stop at the door to one of twentieth century’s towering genius in mathematics, the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, who by the time he died at the age of 32 years, had composed 3000 theorems, which are being deciphered till today. Ramanujan had no formal training in mathematics and was not able to pass the University Entrance examinations. He had to support himself by working as an accounts clerk at the Port Trust in Madras. His only exposure to mathematics was a well thumbed copy of Carr’s book of mathematics, a school publication popular in British colonies and at least a generation out of date. This shipping clerk from Tamil Nadu was to become a fellow of the Royal Society and a fellow of Trinity College, England!

Albert Einstein knows no introduction to the pantheon of geniuses but Ramanujan is not as well known, even in his country, India. Most Indians have heard of his name in generalizations as a genius in mathematics. Many in Tamil Nadu, the state he was born in know him as Kanukku (‘Math’) Ramanujan. Perhaps, this has to do with the definitive association of Einstein and his discovery of the general theory of relativity, taught verbatim in school textbooks in science and physics everywhere in the world. My first experience with Ramanujan, an introduction hardly unique, was the story of the famous Hardy-Ramanujan Taxicab number.

"Once, in the taxi from London, Hardy noticed its number, 1729. He must have thought about it a little because he entered the room where Ramanujan lay in bed and, with scarcely a hello, blurted out his disappointment with it. It was, he declared, 'rather a dull number,' adding that he hoped that wasn't a bad omen. 'No, Hardy,' said Ramanujan, 'it is a very interesting number. It is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two [positive] cubes in two different ways"' (Hofstadter 1989, Kanigel 1991, Snow 1993; Hardy 1999, pp. 13 and 68).

There are portends that this unknown quality to Ramanujan amongst the masses is about to change. There is nothing more galvanizing than the fine arts world bringing taking on such a project. Ramanujan has now attracted an outpouring of interest in his work and more so his life. This brings us to AlterEgo Productions, forthcoming production, David Freeman’s A First Class Man, a play about Ramanujan and his complex relationship with the Cambridge don Professor GH Hardy, his mentor , who brought Ramanujan over to Cambridge in 1914. David Freeman had read Robert Kanigel’s book on Ramanujan, The Man Who Knew Infinity, considered the definitive biography by many, and it provided the inspiration to dramatize Ramanujan’s life. His early attempts were work shopped by the Lark Play Development Center in New York and the play took shape through many iterations of the script. It took a SouthAsian theater company like Alter Ego Productions to finally decide to produce the play.

The story of a simple man with a genius for coming up with mathematical theorems and with little formal training is fascinating because amongst the sciences, mathematics demands the most rigorous proof that is extensively peer reviewed. In the face of the overwhelming rationalism seen in mathematics, the stories of Ramanujan and John Nash, Jr, the Nobel Prize winning discoverer of game theory and the protagonist of Sylvia Nasar’s A Beautiful Mind, stand out starkly. In Ramanujan’s instance each theorem was because of divine inspiration from the family deity, the goddess Namagiri: Schizophrenia in John Nash’s lifelong battle with the disease. The work of Ramanujan and his body of more than 3000 theorems have consumed the likes of Professor Bruce Berndt at the University of Illinois who has spent almost three decades deciphering Ramanujan’s notebooks, the ones that he scrawled his equations in a century ago. Springer Publishing, publishes the Ramanujan Journal, a leading journal on number theory that has 25 editors on the board, representing universities from the USA to Japan. The SASTRA institute in Thanjavur recently instituted the SASTRA, in remembrance of Ramanujan. The prize is given to mathematicians under the age of 32 years (the age at which Ramanjuan passed away) for their outstanding contribution in number theory. Manjul Bhargava and Kannan Sounderrajan were the first recepients of the prize at a function held in Ramanujan's hometown of Kumbakonam.

For mathematicians everywhere, deciphering Ramanujan’s compendium of theorems has proved to be immensely challenging and rewarding. But what is there for the non-mathematicians? Well, the equally important task to take Ramanujan out of the ivory tower. We forget that Ramanujan was not just a mathematician, although he happens to be one of the few definitive ones, in the lines of Euler, Fermat, and Poincaire, he was also a human being of flesh and blood. Mathematics proved to be a giant source of sublimation for this apparently simple man making choices that he did not have control of; his education, work, and marriage. His unhappiness with making these choices drove him from India, much against his religious beliefs to find validity in his passion, mathematics, to Cambridge and GH Hardy, to bear miserably cold winters, starvation, and a society that understood very little of him, finally to sickness and death. In his short span of 32 years, he lived in those days, a remarkable life. A life that apart from a few of us, know very little of, because so far we have books. And very few read those. But as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. His story is perfect for stage, a fable full of luck, hope, romance, inspiration and finally tragedy. A First Class Man, spearheads a line of future productions that are coming out on Ramanujan. Next year, Stephen Fry, a fellow Cambridge alumni and Dev Benegal are bringing out a movie on Ramanujan, followed by Warner Brothers and their picture on his life and work. What would have Ramanujan made of this adulation, largely missing in his life. I doubt that it would have made any dent in his phenomenal productivity but there might have been a little smile on his face that The Man who knew Infinity was finally getting his due. Perhaps, like Einstein and relativity, we will now know him as the man who discovered the theory on partition numbers.

Playing from October 5th to 21st at the 45th Street Theater. To purchase tickets, please visit smarttix.com or call 212 868 4444. For press inquiries please contact Shourin Roy at sr240@columbia.edu or 646 662 6057.

Images Courtesy Alter Ego Productions