Was Ramanujan mentally alert even during his illness?
Answers
Answer:
When in the spring of 1917 Ramanujan became acutely ill, gastric ulcer was diagnosed. This could have been a recurrence of intestinal amoebiasis, this time in the transverse colon, where it can give rise to symptoms closely resembling those of gastric ulcer, but without dysentery.
Answer:
A January night in 1913 found the two renowned Cambridge mathematicians
G.H. Hardy and J.E. Littlewood, in the latter’s rooms in Trinity College, poring over an
unsolicited manuscript of mathematical formulae, which had arrived that morning in
Hardy’s mail. The letter was from a 25-year-old Hindu clerk, Srinivasa Ramanujan
(1887-1920), who lived in Madras and was as regards mathematics entirely self-educated.
Many mathematicians receive letters from cranks and hoaxers, but it was at once obvious
that this author was no crank, since not one of his theorems, as E.H. Neville later pointed
out, could have been set in even the most advanced mathematics examination in the
world. The suspicion of a hoax by a competent mathematician, where familiar theorems
are skillfully disguised, was dispelled by Hardy’s recognition that a few of the results
defeated him completely; he had never seen anything the least like them before. ‘A single
look at them is enough to show that they could only be written down by a mathematician
of the highest class. When they parted that night both Hardy and Littlewood was
comparing him with Jacobi, the great German master of formulae.
This famous episode bore immediate fruit for Ramanujan. Hardy at once joined forces
with others in Madras in obtaining a research studentship for him so that he could pursue
mathematical research full-time, and in arranging his coming to Trinity College,
Cambridge in April 1914 to work with Hardy and to have first-hand contact with
European mathematicians.