Explore Genius
Companion to The Boy Who Dreamed of Infinity
1) Use complex math in everyday life
2) Research the life and work of Srinivasa Ramanujan
3) Research hinduism and how it influenced mathematics
4) Create parallel timelines of the history of math in Greece and India
Perhaps on a safe walk or a short family drive, children’s appetite for numbers may be activated. Encourage them to add all the numbers on license plates of parked or moving motor vehicles. Invite children to move beyond simple addition to more complex mathematical operations using still further license plate numbers.
There are a great many Internet resources about the life and works of Srinivasa Ramanujan. Please note that while most public libraries are closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, many encourage the use of their many virtual services including live chats with reference librarians.
The author of The Boy Who Dreamed of Infinity was only six years old when she accompanied her father, also a mathematician, to Cambridge University where he miraculously discovered what had thought to have been Ramanujan’s Lost Notebook. Can a research librarian help today’s mathematical prodigies unlock the insights and solutions that were found in the Ramanujan’s Lost Notebook? Why are contemporary mathematicians still studying the notebooks of Ramanujan more than a century after they were created?
Ramanujan was a deeply religious man. One of his most famous quotations is, “An equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God.” He did not separate his knowledge and love of mathematics from his piety and religious devotion. Ramanujan was a Hindu. Parents can partner with young scholars to use online resources or books at home about world religions to learn about the Hindu faith, one of the oldest of all religions in the world. How is Hinduism similar to, yet also different from, major religions found in the USA today such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam?
Many historians who view ancient history through the prism of Western Civilization trace the origins of mathematics to the Ancient Greeks, and in particular to Euclid, Archimedes, and Pythagoras. However, in her Author’s Note, Amy Alznauer writes that centuries before mathematics appeared in Greece, India had a rich mathematical history that included both the concept and the symbol for zero. Even in ancient India, mathematics was not something that stood alone. Mathematics was indivisible from philosophy, art, and religion.
Can today’s young historians research the evolution and contributions of mathematics as discovered by scholars from India? Ask them to take note of how mathematics and religion were part of the same whole. Perhaps they can create parallel timelines of the history of mathematics in India and in Greece.
