Book Review: The Man Who Knew Infinity

Srinivas Ramanujan was a brilliant Indian mathematician who made seminal contributions to Number Theory and the theory of continued fractions. Robert Kanigel's book, "The Man Who Knew Infinity" is a biography of Ramanujan.

The book talks about Ramanujan's life in quite some detail. Robert has provided a lot of color by traveling to the places involved, and deeply researching Ramanujan's life. The book has photographs of the places and maps of areas, making it easy to identify with the story. The biography is well balanced and impartial. If this was all the book contained, it would already be a worthy read.

What I found most interesting was the associated commentary on Indian society, values and the education system. Ramanujan was ignored by the Indian education system, largely because he refused to conform to its requirements. Ramanujan showed an early brilliance in Mathematics. But the system didn't care for exceptional performance in one field. Due to the inflexibility of the system, the talent of a brilliant mathematician was wasted. Having suffered through the Indian education system, I found the passages revealing. Even back in Ramanujan's day, the system was inflexible and idiotic. Many people recognized the inflexibility of the system, its arbitrary outcome, and the ill effect on genuine talent.

How much part did Indian society and customs play in Ramanujan's downfall? Ramanujan refused to alter his diet in cold, cloudy England. As a result, he got very little vitamin D, and suffered poor health. This is a problem that persists to this day: Indians who firmly adhere to a restricted diet suffer from problems in countries where an Indian diet is unsuitable. Ramanujan's wife was poorly treated by his mother, and this poor treatment led to misunderstanding and stress in Ramanujan's life. Would the outcome have been different if the Indian arranged marriage was not as stifling?

Ramanujan's life is full of questions. It makes me sad at the outcome. But more importantly, it makes me wonder.

Would a Ramanujan be possible today? Could a lower middle class boy with no talent for anything other than Mathematics be recognized as a genius? Could he even reach a point where he could seek collaboration or patronage from Western mathematicians?

It is a very sad tale, though one I think every Indian student should know. Indian students yearn for exposure to foreign education and worldwide recognition. This is one example of a person who got both, and yet he had a sad and lonely life. The outcome could have been so much different. Ramanujan was as good as Euler or a Gauss, according to people who worked with him. And yet his talent was squandered away. An early death, a lonely life full of struggle. And Ramanujan was lucky. Today, he probably would have no hope of success.

Image courtesy Wikipedia.

Indian traffic fatalities compared to the US

A friend of ours was involved in a car accident recently. Car collisions are very common in India, most Indians know a friend who has been in a car collision, usually with horrific outcomes. For the number of cars in India, the fatality rate is unusually high.  Here are the numbers.

In 2009, India had roughly 114,000 road fatalities, and roughly 12.3 million vehicles. The fatality per vehicle in India is roughly 114/12300 = 0.0093 or roughly 0.01. For every hundred cars, there is one fatality.

For comparison, in 2007, the US had 41,000 road fatalities, and 254 million vehicles. The fatality per vehicle is .00016, or roughly 0.0002. For every ten thousand cars in the US, there are two fatalities.

The two rates are off by a factor of fifty! For every fifty cars that are involved in a fatal accident in India, one car is involved in a fatal accident in the US.

This glosses over some key differences, like occupancy of individual cars. Vehicles in the US have one or two passengers, while Indian vehicles are more likely to have three or more people. But even that cannot account for the huge difference. Even assuming that Indian cars have twice the number of passengers, you are twenty five times more likely to die on the road in India than in the US. This number is still very large. When you account for average speeds (significantly lower in India), the numbers look even worse. Driving at higher speeds is inherently more dangerous, and the speed of traffic in the US is much higher than in India. All put together, the factor of fifty is still too high.

One key difference between the US and India is that traffic laws are not enforced in India and are thus not followed. Here is an example of the chaos that ensues: cars on the wrong side of the road, drivers rushing past a stop light, and confusion at every intersection. Policemen can be bribed with small currency: Rs.200 ($4) settles most matters. Many drivers have forged licenses, and even the official driving test doesn't ensure that the driver knows all the rules.

In comparison, even in the worst traffic in the US: Los Angeles at rush hour, everyone follows the rules, there's nobody coming in the wrong direction. Nobody splits lanes, and even though it is frustrating, people follow the rules. Driving in LA isn't fun: the drivers can be edgy and rash, but even at its worst, the traffic is a lot more sane than on Indian roads.

It's no wonder that the fatality rate is so high in India.