Srinivasa Ramanujan, a math genius from Madras, was called to Trinity College, Cambridge, at the beginning of the 20th century where he summarily blew away stuffy old white men (Bertrand Russell among them), who were quite pumped on their own intelligence. The Man Who Knew Infinity, a British biographical drama, tells Ramanujan’s story, which is not just about genius, of course, but racism. The very fact that his name is unknown to most of us proves the point.
It’s hard to say what Ramanujan knew, and how he knew it. And that’s what the Trinity toffs struggled with, preferring to cast him as a charlatan rather than a man with an unfathomably brilliant mind. Consequently, they insist that he provide proofs for his theorems on things like partition (what?), and in doing so, confine a racehorse to a pony pen. To be fair, his notebooks have taken their just place next to Newton’s Principia Mathematica in the Wren Library, and in 1918, Ramanujan became both a Fellow of the Royal Society and of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Dev Patel is dreamy in the role, and Jeremy Irons, professor and eventual friend, does his usual nice job of being English. We long for Ramanujan to sail the 6,000 miles home, where he can keep chalking out problems on the temple floor. “An equation has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God,” he says to the blank faces of his inferior ‘peers.’
Should You See It? Yes, but it’s a fraction slow.
Viewed at Landmark Plaza Frontenac Cinema
