Ramanujan
Ramanujan and Superstrings
Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920, India) is hailed as the greatest mathematician that history has ever known. The only other great mathematician approaching his genius, is Reiman (one might add that the life of Ramanujan very much resembles that of Reiman). Ramanujan, grew up in a poor destitute family, in a village, and with no formal education. His only exposure to mathematics was when he was 15 years old, when he stumbled across a mathematics book by George Carr, containing 6000 theorems. This book kindled his genius, he set out to verify all the theorems in the book, and went on further to derive theorems of his own, in this venture he rederived a 100 years worth of mathematics on his own – having had absolutely no formal education.
Ramanujan left a legacy of three notebooks containing 4,000 formulas densely packed in 400 pages and a fourth notebook of 130 scrap pages, known as the “Lost Notebook” (published now by Springer-Verlag, a top publishing company for scientific and mathematical journals) containing the work during the last year of his life. The mathematician Richard Askey says, “The work of that one year, while he was dying, was the equivalent of a lifetime of work for a very great mathematician. What he accomplished was unbelievable. If it were a novel, nobody would believe it.”
I never knew of Ramanujan’s contribution to superstring theory until I came across it in Michio Kaku’s book, Hyperspace, where he traces the progress of modern quantum-cosmology from past to present day.
Superstrings are the fundamental constituents of the universe (not just of matter, but the fabric of time, space, and the forces by which we and the universe exist). The universe started with nothing but these fundamental modes of vibration, or superstrings.
Here is an excerpt from the book:
Looking at the progression of Ramanujan’s equations, it’s as though we have been trained for years to listen to the Western music of Beethoven, and then suddenly we are exposed to another type of music, an eerily beautiful Eastern music blending harmonies and rhythms never heard before in Western music.
Whenever the string executes its complex motions in space-time by splitting and recombining, a large number of highly sophisticated mathematical identities must be satisfied. These are precisely the mathematical identities discovered by Ramanujan (Since physicists add two more dimensions when they count the total number of vibrations appearing in a relativistic theory, this means that space-time must have 24+2=26 space-time dimensions.)
Magical Genius?
Ramanujan credited his abilities to his family goddess, Namagiri, and looked to her for inspiration in his work.
An equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God.
- Ramanujan
Ramanujan is categorized as a “magical genius”. But I wouldn’t stop there. One should start asking for example, how was he able to derive 100 years worth of mathematics and beyond like Beethoven produced great compositions – i.e. how did it just fall in his lap. That is, what the even most accomplished mathematicians today would have to rack their brains for a lifetime to accomplish. Also, how are the answers from his inspirations so mathematically accurate? How is Beethoven’s compositions, which also came in a flash, so harmonic (instead of noise)? These are the questions that Western science ignores to explore, but Hindu’s have been exploring for ages through the science of yoga.