Ramanujan Quotes

• No mathematician should ever allow him to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game. ... Galois died at twenty-one, Abel at twenty-seven, Ramanujan at thirty-three, Riemann at forty. There have been men who have done great work later; ... [but] I do not know of a single instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty. ... A mathematician may still be competent enough at sixty, but it is useless to expect him to have original ideas.

  G. H. Hardy

  Art, Science, Past

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• I remember once going to see him [Ramanujan] when he was lying ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi-cab No. 1729, and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavourable omen. "No," he replied, "it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as a sum of two cubes in two different ways."

  G. H. Hardy

  Lying, Two, Numbers

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• ... each of the 24 modes in the Ramanujan function corresponds to a physical vibration of a string. Whenever the string executes its complex motions in space-time by splitting and recombining, a large number of highly sophisticated mathematical identities must be satisfied. These are precisely the mathematical identities discovered by Ramanujan.

  Michio Kaku

  Numbers, Space, Identity

  Michio Kaku (1995). “Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension”, p.173, Oxford University Press, USA

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• For my part, it is difficult for me to say what I owe to Ramanujan - his originality has been a constant source of suggestion to me ever since I knew him, and his death is one of the worst blows I have ever had.

  G. H. Hardy

  Blow, Suggestions, Originality

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• That was the wonderful thing about Ramanujan. He discovered so much, and yet he left so much more in his garden for other people to discover.

  Freeman Dyson

  Garden, People, Wonderful

  Freeman J. Dyson (1996). “Selected Papers of Freeman Dyson with Commentary”, p.190, American Mathematical Soc.

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• I read in the proof sheets of Hardy on Ramanujan: "As someone said, each of the positive integers was one of his personal friends." My reaction was, "I wonder who said that; I wish I had." In the next proof-sheets I read (what now stands), "It was Littlewood who said..."

  John Edensor Littlewood

  Friendship, Math, Wish

  John Edensor Littlewood, Béla Bollobás (1986). “Littlewood's Miscellany”, p.61, Cambridge University Press

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• Plenty of mathematicians, Hardy knew, could follow a step-by-step discursus unflaggingly-yet counted for nothing beside Ramanujan. Years later, he would contrive an informal scale of natural mathematical ability on which he assigned himself a 25 and Littlewood a 30. To David Hilbert, the most eminent mathematician of the day, he assigned an 80. To Ramanujan he gave 100.

  Robert Kanigel

  Nature, Science, Years

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• There is always more in one of Ramanujan's formulae than meets the eye, as anyone who sets to work to verify those which look the easiest will soon discover. In some the interest lies very deep, in others comparatively near the surface; but there is not one which is not curious and entertaining.

  G. H. Hardy

  Lying, Eye, Science

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• Srinivasa Ramanujan was the strangest man in all of mathematics, probably in the entire history of science. He has been compared to a bursting supernova, illuminating the darkest, most profound corners of mathematics, before being tragically struck down by tuberculosis at the age of 33, like Riemann before him. Working in total isolation from the main currents of his field, he was able to rederive 100 years' worth of Western mathematics on his own. The tragedy of his life is that much of his work was wasted rediscovering known mathematics.

  Michio Kaku

  Life, Science, Men

  "Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension". Book by Michio Kaku, March 24, 1994.

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• The seeds from Ramanujan's garden have been blowing on the wind and have been sprouting all over the landscape.
  [On the stimulating effects of Ramanujan's mathematical legacy.]

  Freeman Dyson

  Garden, Wind, Legacy

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• They [formulae 1.10 - 1.12 of Ramanujan] must be true because, if they were not true, no one would have had the imagination to invent them.

  G. H. Hardy

  Imagination, Being True, Ifs

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• In the simplest array of digits [Ramanujan] detected wonderful properties: congruences, symmetries and relationships which had escaped the notice of even the outstandingly gifted theoreticians.

  James R Newman

  Simplicity, Wonder, Congruence

  James R. Newman (1960). “The World of Mathematics”, p.367, Рипол Классик

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• Sometimes in studying Ramanujan's work, [George Andrews] said at another time, "I have wondered how much Ramanujan could have done if he had had MACSYMA or SCRATCHPAD or some other symbolic algebra package."

  Robert Kanigel

  Math, Done, Study

  Robert Kanigel (2016). “The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan”, p.349, Simon and Schuster

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• There is great exhilaration in breaking one of these things. ... Ramanujan gives no hints, no proof of his formulas, so everything you do you feel is your own.[About verifying Ramanujan's equations in a newly found manuscript.]

  George Andrews

  Science, Giving, Hints

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