Some time ago I learned about this amazing man Srinivasa Ramanujan. He was an Indian mathematician, a natural genius who with almost no formal training in pure mathematics made extraordinary contributions to various fields of mathematics.
The following incident about Ramanujan that was narrated by P. C. Mahalanobis struck me as particularly interesting.
On another occasion, I went to his room to have lunch with him. The First World War had started some time ago. I had in my hand a copy of the monthly Strand Magazine which at that time used to publish a number of puzzles to be solved by the readers. Ramanujan was stirring something in a pan over the fire for our lunch. I was sitting near the table, turning over the pages of the Strand Magazine. I got interested in a problem involving a relation between two numbers. I have forgotten the details but I remember the type of the problem. Two British officers had been billeted in Paris in two different houses in a long street; the two numbers of these houses were related in a special way; the problem was to find out the two numbers. It was not at all difficult; I got the solution in a few minutes by trial and error. In a joking way, I told Ramanujan, ‘Now here is a problem for you’. He said, ‘What problem, tell me’, and went on stirring the pan. I read out the question from the Strand Magazine. He promptly answered ‘Please take down the solution’ and dictated a continued fraction. The first term was the solution which I had obtained. Each successive term represented successive solutions for the same type of relation between two numbers, as the number of houses in the street would increase indefinitely. I was amazed and I asked him how he got the solution in a flash. He said, ‘Immediately I heard the problem it was clear that the solution should obviously be a continued fraction; I then thought, which continued fraction? And the answer came to my mind. It was just as simple as this.’
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