The letter that revealed Ramanujan's genius

Ramanujan was a self-taught Indian mathematician who travelled to England to work with professor G H Hardy after sending him a letter describing some of his remarkable ideas. In this video we take a look at that letter and at Hardy’s initial response.

Further reading/watching:
Making sense of 1+2+3+… = -1/12:
YouTube Ramanujan documentary:
Wolfram blog:
The distribution of prime numbers:
A Gentle Introduction to Analytic Continuation:
Images of Ramanujan’s letter (on Twitter):
A recent movie about Ramanujan is ‘The man Who Knew Infinity’ directed by Matthew Brown

0:00 – Intro
1:03 – Ramanujan’s letter
8:56 – Hardy’s reply
11:22 – Patron Cat of the Day

Hardy’s reply letter is taken from ‘Ramanujan, letters and commentary’ – Bruce C. Burndt & Robert A. Rankin. Ramanujan’s original letter is from the Cambridge University Archive.

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