Higgo James wrote:
>
> Tell us more about Ramanujan; he seems to agree.
>
I don't know much. I've come across his name a few times. The
first was, I think, a small book called "Fermat's Last Theorem".
Also, if memory serves, he was mentioned in the movie "Good Will
Hunting" - the older professor compared Matt Damon's character
to Ramanujan. I just found this web page, which has some info:
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Ramanujan.html.
Dates: 1887 - 1920. From what I remember, he was so far ahead
of his time that many mathemeticians in England thought he was
a crackpot. So naturally I was intrigued by this quote I found.
I was hoping some others might know more, especially if he
actually tried to formalize this theory of zero and infinity in
any way.
> >
> >
> > Chris' Adventures at the Library:
> >
> >
> > While skimming another book, I came across this quote:
> >
> > Ramanujan [a brilliant young Indian mathematician in the
> > early part of this century] himself constructed a theory
> > of reality using zero and infinity. (Most of Ramanujan's
> > contemporaries in England could not understand what he
> > was trying to say when he presented this arcane, mystical
> > concept - can you?) To Ramanujan, zero represented
> > "absolute reality". Infinity was the myriad
> > manifestations of that reality. What happens if you
> > multiply them together:
> > 0 X infinity
> > To Ramanujan, the product (0 X infinity) was not a single
> > number, but all numbers, each of which corresponds to an
> > "act of creation". What could Ramanujan have meant by
> > this?
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Chris Maloney
> > http://www.chrismaloney.com
> >
> > "Knowledge is good"
> > -- Emil Faber
> >
--
Chris Maloney
http://www.chrismaloney.com
"Knowledge is good"
-- Emil Faber
Received on Fri Jul 16 1999 - 06:26:58 PDT