Sunday, December 30, 2012

Deathbed math puzzle solved-after 100 years


 
You may have seen this one already. I found it fascinating. A math genius from India drew a puzzle on his deathbed that baffled scientists for almost 100 years. He said it had appeared to him in a dream (In my dreams, people are always chasing me)...

While on his death-bed in 1920, Ramanujan wrote a letter to his mentor, English mathematician G. H. Hardy, outlining several new mathematical functions never before heard of, along with a hunch about how they worked.

Decades years later, researchers say they've proved he was right - and that the formula could explain the behavior of black holes.

I've often wondered about the behavior of black holes myself. At the time of his death, most scientists thought Ramanujan was full of curry. Of course, he was eccentric and self taught ...

Ramanujan, a self-taught mathematician born in a rural village in South India, spent so much time thinking about math that he flunked out of college in India twice.
Ramanujan, a devout Hindu, thought these patterns were revealed to him by the goddess Namagiri.
 
 It just goes to show how little we really know about the human brain and why we should sleep more. Without possessing any of the tools of modern mathematicians, a crackpot from a rural village in India was able to understand elaborate math patterns, unknown to the rest of man until 100 years later. Now, there's a mind that was ahead of it's time. Good heavens Miss Sakamoto-you're beautiful!...

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