{"id":2707,"date":"2016-05-01T17:22:14","date_gmt":"2016-05-01T21:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=2707"},"modified":"2017-01-12T14:38:52","modified_gmt":"2017-01-12T19:38:52","slug":"largely-just-men-doing-sums-my-review-of-the-excellent-ramanujan-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=2707","title":{"rendered":"“Largely just men doing sums”: My review of the excellent Ramanujan film"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Warning:<\/em> This movie review contains spoilers, as well as a continued fraction expansion.]<\/strong><\/p>\n

These days, it takes an\u00a0extraordinary occasion for me and Dana\u00a0to arrange the complicated,\u00a0rocket-launch-like\u00a0babysitting logistics involved in going out for a night at the movies<\/em>. \u00a0One such an occasion was\u00a0an opening-weekend screening of\u00a0The Man Who Knew Infinity<\/a>—<\/em>the new movie\u00a0about Srinivasa Ramanujan<\/a> and his relationship with G. H. Hardy<\/a>—followed by a Q&A with Matthew Brown\u00a0(who wrote and directed the film), Robert Kanigel (who wrote the biography on which the film\u00a0was based), and Fields Medalist Manjul Bhargava<\/a> (who consulted on the film).<\/p>\n

I read Kanigel’s\u00a0The Man Who Knew Infinity<\/em><\/a>\u00a0in the early nineties; it was a major\u00a0influence on my life. \u00a0There were equations\u00a0in that book to stop a nerdy 13-year-old’s pulse, like<\/p>\n

$$1+9\\left( \\frac{1}{4}\\right) ^{4}+17\\left( \\frac{1\\cdot5}{4\\cdot8}\\right)
\n^{4}+25\\left( \\frac{1\\cdot5\\cdot9}{4\\cdot8\\cdot12}\\right) ^{4}+\\cdots
\n=\\frac{2^{3\/2}}{\\pi^{1\/2}\\Gamma\\left( 3\/4\\right) ^{2}}$$<\/p>\n

$$\\frac{1}{1+\\frac{e^{-2\\pi}}{1+\\frac{e^{-4\\pi}}{1+\\frac{e^{-6\\pi}}{1+\\cdots}}%
\n}}=\\left( \\sqrt{\\frac{5+\\sqrt{5}}{2}}-\\frac{\\sqrt{5}+1}{2}\\right)
\n\\sqrt[5]{e^{2\\pi}}$$<\/p>\n

A thousand pages of exposition\u00a0about Ramanujan’s mysterious self-taught mathematical style, the effect his work\u00a0had on Hardy and Littlewood, his\u00a0impact on the later\u00a0development of analysis, etc., could never\u00a0replace the experience of just staring<\/em>\u00a0at these things!\u00a0 Popularizers are constantly trying to “explain” mathematical beauty by comparing it to art, music, or poetry,\u00a0but I can best understand art, music,\u00a0and poetry if I assume other people experience them like the above\u00a0identities. \u00a0Across all the years and cultures and continents, can’t you\u00a0feel Ramanujan himself leaping off your screen, still trying to\u00a0make you see\u00a0this bizarre aspect of the architecture of reality\u00a0that the goddess Namagiri showed\u00a0him in a dream?<\/p>\n

Reading Kanigel’s book, I\u00a0was also entranced by the culture of early-twentieth-century Cambridge mathematics: the Tripos, Wranglers, High Table. \u00a0I asked, why was I here<\/em> and not there<\/em>? \u00a0And even though\u00a0I was (and remain) at most 1729-1729<\/sup>\u00a0of a\u00a0Ramanujan, I could strongly identify with his story, because I knew\u00a0that I, too, was about to\u00a0embark\u00a0on the journey from total scientific nobody\u00a0to someone who the experts might\u00a0at least take\u00a0seriously enough to try to prove him\u00a0wrong.<\/p>\n

Anyway, a couple years after reading Kanigel’s biography, I went to the wonderful Canada\/USA MathCamp<\/a>, and there met Richard K. Guy<\/a>, who’d actually known<\/em>\u00a0Hardy. \u00a0I couldn’t have been more impressed\u00a0had Guy\u00a0visited Platonic heaven and met \u03c0\u00a0and e there. \u00a0To put it mildly, no one in my high school had known G. H. Hardy.<\/p>\n

I often fantasized—this was the nineties—about writing the screenplay myself for a Ramanujan movie, so that millions of moviegoers could experience the story as I did. \u00a0Incidentally, I also fantasized about writing screenplays for Alan Turing and John Nash\u00a0movies. \u00a0I\u00a0do have a few\u00a0mathematical biopic ideas that haven’t<\/em> yet been taken, and for which any potential buyers should get in touch with me:<\/p>\n