![]() ![]() Of course there are some active researchers who find a narrow vein of expertise and mine it for years in a low-key, whistle-while-you-work way, but most of us frequently step out of our comfort-zones. Such struggle, less anguished but just as strenuous, is I think the norm for productive mathematicians. The film shows Ramanujan’s struggle to find proofs of his insights that will satisfy his collaborator Hardy and the rest of the mathematical establishment. Doing research in math isn’t easy, even for great mathematicians. His desire to find others who see those colors impels him to leave her and all the other people he knows and loves, to seek his destiny in England in 1914.Ģ. ![]() Early in the film, in talking to his wife about the artistic side of math, Ramanujan resorts to metaphor, speaking to her of his formulas as paintings composed of “colors you cannot see”. Math is a creative endeavor that can evoke esthetic delight.Īctor Dev Patel, bringing Matt Brown’s script to vibrant life, conveys the sense of beauty that Ramanujan finds in his pursuit of mathematics. Here are some characteristics of mathematics that you’ll learn about from the movie:ġ. Official movie poster for “The Man Who Knew Infinity”. (I’m going to assume that you’ve read my blog essay Sri Ramanujan and the Secrets of Lakshmi from last month, or that you already know something about the life and work of Ramanujan.) 9999 × … and learn what it has to do with Ramanujan’s story. Along the way, you’ll meet the surprising base-ten expansion of the infinite product. I’m not saying that the film in and of itself is inaccurate, but it does recycle some tropes about mathematics that you’ve probably seen in other movies about mathematicians and that give an inaccurate picture of mathematics. If I knew as much about movie-making as Matt Brown does, I probably would have made the same choices he did.īut I am going to tell you, fellow-members of the movie-going public, what characteristics of the math life are conveyed by the film, and what characteristics aren’t. So I’m not going to tell Matt Brown, the writer/director of “The Man Who Knew Infinity”, what he should have done differently in a movie that, as the fine print on the poster reminds us, is merely based on the life of Ramanujan. During my years as a mathematician, not one film-maker has tried to teach me how to write better articles. ![]()
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