The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan

ISBN-13: 9780349104522 / Angielski / Miękka / 1992 / 448 str.

Robert Kanigel

Opis

The tale of a relationship between a young Indian mathematics genius, Ramanujan, and his tutor at Cambridge University, G.H. Hardy, in the years before World War I. Through their eyes the reader is taken on a journey through numbers theory. Ramanujan would regularly telescope 12 steps of logic into two - the effect is said to be like Dr Watson in the train of some argument by Sherlock Holmes. The language of symbols and infinitely large (and small) regions of mathematics should be rendered with clarity for the general reader.

Recenzje

It is a magic, tragic ugly-duckling fable that Robert Kanigel tells in The Man Who Knew Infinity... In it, a greatly gifted man is born to a culture that doesn't understand what the man is about. Still, his talent blossoms until news of it spreads to the other side of the world, where he is eventually summoned by the masters of his skill. The man goes among them and performs his magic. Skepticism gives way to wonder. But away from home, the man grows lonely and ill. He returns to his birthplace, only to die. New York Times

O autorze

Kanigel, Robert
Robert Kanigel is the author of six other books, including The Man Who Knew Infinity. After 13 years as professor of science writing at MIT, he has returned to full-time writing in Baltimore.