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My Search for Ramanujan: How I Learned to Count
"The son of a prominent Japanese mathematician who came to the United States after World War II, Ken Ono was raised on a diet of high expectations and little praise. Rebelling against his pressure-cooker of a life, Ken determined to drop out of high school to follow his own path. To obtain his father’s approval, he invoked the biography of the famous Indian mathematical prodigy Srinivasa Ramanujan, whom his father revered, who had twice flunked out of college because of his single-minded devotion to mathematics.
Ono describes his rocky path through college and graduate school, interweaving Ramanujan’s story with his own and telling how at key moments, he was inspired by Ramanujan and guided by mentors who encouraged him to pursue his interest in exploring Ramanujan’s mathematical legacy.
Picking up where others left off, beginning with the great English mathematician G.H. Hardy, who brought Ramanujan to Cambridge in 1914, Ono has devoted his mathematical career to understanding how in his short life, Ramanujan was able to discover so many deep mathematical truths, which Ramanujan believed had been sent to him as visions from a Hindu goddess. And it was Ramanujan who was ultimately the source of reconciliation between Ono and his parents.
Ono’s search for Ramanujan ranges over three continents and crosses paths with mathematicians whose lives span the globe and the entire twentieth century and beyond. Along the way, Ken made many fascinating discoveries. The most important and surprising one of all was his own humanity."
Ono describes his rocky path through college and graduate school, interweaving Ramanujan’s story with his own and telling how at key moments, he was inspired by Ramanujan and guided by mentors who encouraged him to pursue his interest in exploring Ramanujan’s mathematical legacy.
Picking up where others left off, beginning with the great English mathematician G.H. Hardy, who brought Ramanujan to Cambridge in 1914, Ono has devoted his mathematical career to understanding how in his short life, Ramanujan was able to discover so many deep mathematical truths, which Ramanujan believed had been sent to him as visions from a Hindu goddess. And it was Ramanujan who was ultimately the source of reconciliation between Ono and his parents.
Ono’s search for Ramanujan ranges over three continents and crosses paths with mathematicians whose lives span the globe and the entire twentieth century and beyond. Along the way, Ken made many fascinating discoveries. The most important and surprising one of all was his own humanity."
254 pages, Hardcover
First published February 22, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
June 2, 2017
I will continue mentoring bright math students, the future Ramanujans.... What is interesting about many of the students that I have mentored ... is that they have often come from nontraditional or unpromising circumstances. What unites them is that they have been drawn by the beauty of mathematics. I owe it to them and my mentors, and I owe it to Ramanujan, to do my part. Searching for Ramanujan is my calling; it is my life's purpose.
How was I lucky enough to get to where I am today? That is the question that opened this book. The preceding pages prove that the answer is multidimensional, and the many steps in the proof amazingly trace my search for Ramanujan.
This is the second of three books about math that I somehow decided to read. The first is a novel, The Mathematician's Shiva, which I reviewed after my first read and which I've recently read again and studied with a book group, gleaning further insights and understanding. The third, which still is waiting on my to-read list, is A Doubter's Almanac--also a novel. This one is a memoir. (I also read A Beautiful Mind a long time ago. It's a biography, and quite different and better than the movie that was made of it.)
I didn't plan to read books about mathematics; it just happened. Why? I'm not a mathematician. I could do required courses only with hard work and drill, similar to some other areas, such as mastery of spatial directions (how to drive somewhere) or of a tune.
These two recent books that I've read so far are indeed about math, but written for a general audience. They are also about life, and about creativity and its costs. And, you could say as well, about the lack of creativity and its costs.
Ramanujan was an Indian prodigy born in 1887 around the time of my grandparents but who sickened and died young at only 32. For the years he had, though, he spun mathematical gold out of seemingly nothing, to the extent that he's still fueling theory and discovery. He traveled to England to study with a Cambridge mathematician, but although in doing so he opened a way forward mathematically, he became cut off from all his other support mechanisms, even with respect to such basics as diet, since he stuck to his vegetarianism in a setting where basic needs couldn't be met.
The author, Ken Ono, is himself the son of a mathematician born in Japan in 1928 who came of age amidst the Second World War and the end of Japanese society as it had been. His father, along with a group of aspiring young Japanese mathematicians, was "discovered" at a math conference that was held in Japan only ten years after the war ended, in 1955. His father was invited to the US to pursue his career and ended up staying since at home he and his wife and colleagues had been nearly starving. It was an offer he couldn't refuse despite the alien culture and anti-Japanese racism that existed here at the time. For those and other complicated reasons the parents undertook an onerous "tiger-parent" tack in the raising of their three sons, one that created severe obstacles for the author--the heir apparent in the sense that he was the math prodigy--as well as propelling him forward.
The Indian mathematician Ramanujan proves the linchpin of the story. It was a letter from Ramanujan's widow arriving 64 years after his death to thank the elder Ono for a contribution to a sculpture in her husband's honor that provided the impetus for the author, a teenager at the time, to jump ship, so to speak, with parental permission, so as to escape their extreme parenting methods.
Subsequently the author managed to find friends and mentors that saved him. He became able to jettison incompatible pursuits that had been commanded by the parents and find other pursuits that succored him. And after avoiding pitfalls and near disaster he risked unleashing his mathematical creativity. That is to say he risked failure, and without that risk his calling wouldn't have continued to emerge and he wouldn't have found happiness and success.
Throughout, Ramanujan continued to lead the way with his mathematical hints and findings, and also with his place in the social and professional web connecting the author and his friends and colleagues.
This book has a psychological component, obviously. The author also tries to communicate the spiritual component by discussing his religious journey and the spiritual dimension of the mathematics and all the life--and mathematical--connections as well. He succeeds better with the latter, since he never explains his religious choice. His mathematical pursuits give the whole book substance and depth that it wouldn't have if it were a motivational book alone (although it does have that component to some extent) or a self-help book.
In reading this book I didn't say to myself, Oh, he's a genius and so he "made it." I instead thought, He's a human and what he's telling me is to some extent verification of some of my own experiences and a road map. Even though I'm not a mathematician I can sometimes see connections and relationships.
What I've thought about so far after finishing is that he, the author, has been more prone to being mentored. There are a couple of important mentors I had as a young person, and I had some more recently, but I have been more guarded and less open to mentors.
The book is not spectacular writing, but it's an easy read--even the math part, although I just let that part flow over me like beautiful art.
I just read a little fantasy book about unusual children, or "freaks," as another friend called them (Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children). This book, My Search for Ramanujan, is in a sense about peculiar people, too--people who have unusual talents or skills that aren't obvious fits with society as ordinarily conceived. How are they to be made useful, since they weren't "genetically engineered" simply to "fit?"
For that matter, aren't we all unusual?
I remember a supposedly culturally conservative individual quoted in the paper recently as complaining that she wanted "the best person" in some particular job rather than what she saw as some sort of enforced diversity.
This book is about the place in society for talent and creativity and variation and about society being less of a Procrustean bed. And so it's about diversity.
February 24, 2024
I knew nothing about professional mathematics and I'm glad I read this. His experiences/insights were really compelling to me.
Some takeaways:
- there's a huge breadth of experiences in mathematics (and life)-- being on the most direct path is not necessary to do great work.
- The only prerequisite to doing great work is curiosity and hard work. It takes effort to follow curiosity past obstacles and it takes effort to appreciate beauty
- lots of writing about mentorship, appreciating relationships but I don't know what to takeaway. Appreciate the relationships you have but don't kill yourself over missed opportunities?
Some takeaways:
- there's a huge breadth of experiences in mathematics (and life)-- being on the most direct path is not necessary to do great work.
- The only prerequisite to doing great work is curiosity and hard work. It takes effort to follow curiosity past obstacles and it takes effort to appreciate beauty
- lots of writing about mentorship, appreciating relationships but I don't know what to takeaway. Appreciate the relationships you have but don't kill yourself over missed opportunities?
September 19, 2017
Very few top mathematicians have written autobiographies or personal memoirs. Other than the work under review, the names that come readily to mind include Paul Halmos (I Want to Be a Mathematician), Laurent Schwartz (A Mathematician Grappling with His Century), Stanislaw Ulam (Adventures of a Mathematician), André Weil (The Apprenticeship of a Mathematician), and Norbert Wiener (Ex-Prodigy, I Am a Mathematician). In all these cases the individuals were near or past retirement age when their book appeared (69, 86, 67, 85, and 59, respectively). Ken Ono, however, was only 48 and still in the midst of a very successful career.
Other recent personal memoirs by younger mathematicians – Edward Frenkel (Love and Math; my review), Michael Harris (Mathematics without Apologies; my review), Cédric Villani (Birth of a Theorem; my review) – have appeared. But these books deal largely or mostly with mathematics itself, and the personal details, while very interesting, don't seem to be the main point.
Ken Ono's book is different. It is concerned mostly with details of his personal life, and somewhat with the life of his mathematical idol, Srinivasa Ramanujan. The latter's life has been celebrated in a number of books (and a major motion picture). Ono's life, of course, has not, though it has a variety of poignant details. These details should be of great interest to young mathematicians and mathematical students, so the book should be especially recommended for them, as that audience will probably garner much encouragement towards the achievement of a successful mathematical career. In fact, any young person struggling for success in almost any difficult effort should also derive considerable encouragement from Ono's story. The details of Ramanujan's life were similar in a number of respects, which is one reason (but hardly the only one) that Ono was so inspired by Ramanujan's story.
I'm not going to summarize Ono's story here. If the foregoing description is intriguing to you, by all means read the book. It's fairly short. Instead I'll register a couple of disappointments with the book, which account for giving it only 4 stars.
The main disappointment is that the book doesn't go into more detail on the mathematical work of both Ramanujan and Ono, in which there are many things in common. This commonality is no accident, since Ono made extending and clarifying Ramanujan's amazing mathematical insights his principal professional objective. And that's why the omission of more mathematical detail is so unfortunate.
Ramanujan's main work consisted of an astonishing variety of explicit but often abstruse mathematical formulas and numerical examples. Even today, many of these are not well understood. However, many of the formulas involve only "simple" algebraic relations, without any calculus or more advanced concepts. These should be intelligible to most readers who did OK in high school math classes, even if their real import is more obscure. For instance, one interest that Ramanujan and Ono have in common is "partitions" of integers – a very elementary concept, which is simply the number of different ways a positive integer can be written as a sum of smaller positive integers. Ramanujan recorded only a few simple examples and was otherwise tantalizingly vague. In spite of the quite elementary nature of the question, answers are surprizingly difficult to come by. Ono (and several collaborators) have gone much, much farther. Although the methods are difficult, it would have been most welcome if the general outline could at least have been sketched.
It turns out that the underlying explanation for many of the strange results Ramanujan recorded involve mathematical functions ("modular forms") that defy clear description for general readers, but which codify certain symmetry relationships possessed by relatively simple geometric objects (such as a 2-dimensional plane). Although Ramanujan wrote nothing explicitly about modular forms, he apparently had a vague intuition of their importance. Today modular forms have a very central place in contemporary mathematical research. They play an absolutely crucial role, for instance, in Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. Ono is an acknowledged expert in this field. Consequently, one wishes he had devoted perhaps 10 or 20 pages to at least attempting to give general readers at least some general idea of what modular forms are about. It shouldn't have been that hard, and could have been relegated to an appendix.
One other minor criticism is that the book really needs an index. There are so many individuals, events, and concepts mentioned throughout the book that one really wants the ability to locate all references.
To conclude, the following quote from Ono perfectly captures what it means to really "do mathematics":
Other recent personal memoirs by younger mathematicians – Edward Frenkel (Love and Math; my review), Michael Harris (Mathematics without Apologies; my review), Cédric Villani (Birth of a Theorem; my review) – have appeared. But these books deal largely or mostly with mathematics itself, and the personal details, while very interesting, don't seem to be the main point.
Ken Ono's book is different. It is concerned mostly with details of his personal life, and somewhat with the life of his mathematical idol, Srinivasa Ramanujan. The latter's life has been celebrated in a number of books (and a major motion picture). Ono's life, of course, has not, though it has a variety of poignant details. These details should be of great interest to young mathematicians and mathematical students, so the book should be especially recommended for them, as that audience will probably garner much encouragement towards the achievement of a successful mathematical career. In fact, any young person struggling for success in almost any difficult effort should also derive considerable encouragement from Ono's story. The details of Ramanujan's life were similar in a number of respects, which is one reason (but hardly the only one) that Ono was so inspired by Ramanujan's story.
I'm not going to summarize Ono's story here. If the foregoing description is intriguing to you, by all means read the book. It's fairly short. Instead I'll register a couple of disappointments with the book, which account for giving it only 4 stars.
The main disappointment is that the book doesn't go into more detail on the mathematical work of both Ramanujan and Ono, in which there are many things in common. This commonality is no accident, since Ono made extending and clarifying Ramanujan's amazing mathematical insights his principal professional objective. And that's why the omission of more mathematical detail is so unfortunate.
Ramanujan's main work consisted of an astonishing variety of explicit but often abstruse mathematical formulas and numerical examples. Even today, many of these are not well understood. However, many of the formulas involve only "simple" algebraic relations, without any calculus or more advanced concepts. These should be intelligible to most readers who did OK in high school math classes, even if their real import is more obscure. For instance, one interest that Ramanujan and Ono have in common is "partitions" of integers – a very elementary concept, which is simply the number of different ways a positive integer can be written as a sum of smaller positive integers. Ramanujan recorded only a few simple examples and was otherwise tantalizingly vague. In spite of the quite elementary nature of the question, answers are surprizingly difficult to come by. Ono (and several collaborators) have gone much, much farther. Although the methods are difficult, it would have been most welcome if the general outline could at least have been sketched.
It turns out that the underlying explanation for many of the strange results Ramanujan recorded involve mathematical functions ("modular forms") that defy clear description for general readers, but which codify certain symmetry relationships possessed by relatively simple geometric objects (such as a 2-dimensional plane). Although Ramanujan wrote nothing explicitly about modular forms, he apparently had a vague intuition of their importance. Today modular forms have a very central place in contemporary mathematical research. They play an absolutely crucial role, for instance, in Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. Ono is an acknowledged expert in this field. Consequently, one wishes he had devoted perhaps 10 or 20 pages to at least attempting to give general readers at least some general idea of what modular forms are about. It shouldn't have been that hard, and could have been relegated to an appendix.
One other minor criticism is that the book really needs an index. There are so many individuals, events, and concepts mentioned throughout the book that one really wants the ability to locate all references.
To conclude, the following quote from Ono perfectly captures what it means to really "do mathematics":
Doing mathematics is a mental voyage in which clarity of thought and openness to insight make it possible to see the deeper beauty of a mathematical structure, to enter a world where triumph over a problem depends less on conscious effort than on confidence, creativity, determination, and intellectual rigor.
July 16, 2019
Ken: "I have a million dollars."
Ken: "I am not a millionaire though."
Ken: "I have 100 million dollars."
Ken: "I think I am close to being a millionaire."
0. Too little Ramanujan, too much Ken.
1. Repetitive and filled with redundant details.
2. Don't read this book if you're not a math prodigy in search for some guidance.
3. It's a lament about tiger parenting, which he hypocritically ends up being thankful for.
I have no doubt Ken is a genuinely good person, but his story is just not interesting and relatable. This book felt like a confession he needed to get out for personal reasons, and not to tell a fascinating story.
Ken: "I am not a millionaire though."
Ken: "I have 100 million dollars."
Ken: "I think I am close to being a millionaire."
0. Too little Ramanujan, too much Ken.
1. Repetitive and filled with redundant details.
2. Don't read this book if you're not a math prodigy in search for some guidance.
3. It's a lament about tiger parenting, which he hypocritically ends up being thankful for.
I have no doubt Ken is a genuinely good person, but his story is just not interesting and relatable. This book felt like a confession he needed to get out for personal reasons, and not to tell a fascinating story.
October 10, 2017
I have seldom read a book where I am personally acquainted with the author. Reading this book was because I know Ken. Wow! What a story! There is some math - which is over my head. Serious theoretical mathematicians will get much more from this book than I did. The autobiographical nature of this volume is what caused me to continue reading and caused me to enjoy my reading. My understanding of the immigration story has been expanded by the author's writing. Ken's writing is enchanting. I highly recommend this book!
October 19, 2016
It is weird to read the autobiography of someone I know personally. To be clear, I interacted with Ken mostly over the course of an academic year in the 1990s, which formed a short chapter in the book, having nothing to do with that interaction. But the places and people described in the book are quite familiar to me, so that was weird.
The first weirdness was the familiarity. For about half the mathematicians mentioned, I know them, so I had some larger context than the book provided, which is a weird way to experience a book's narrative.
The second weirdness was the unfamiliarity. I grew in Maryland with some mathematical gifts at around the same time Ken did, so I expected to see a lot of parallels. But Ken's upbringing as the child of immigrant parents ensured he had a largely different experience than I did. In a way, that made things more interesting, as it highlighted those differences.
Overall, I found the book very interesting. He is very open about aspects of his life that will probably be new to people who know him far better than I do. The parts about Ramanujan were kind of old hat to anyone who has read The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan, but the story is a good one. Anyway, the book falls short of a fifth star because the prose feels a little bit clunky, but I recommend this to any of my mathematician friends.
The first weirdness was the familiarity. For about half the mathematicians mentioned, I know them, so I had some larger context than the book provided, which is a weird way to experience a book's narrative.
The second weirdness was the unfamiliarity. I grew in Maryland with some mathematical gifts at around the same time Ken did, so I expected to see a lot of parallels. But Ken's upbringing as the child of immigrant parents ensured he had a largely different experience than I did. In a way, that made things more interesting, as it highlighted those differences.
Overall, I found the book very interesting. He is very open about aspects of his life that will probably be new to people who know him far better than I do. The parts about Ramanujan were kind of old hat to anyone who has read The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan, but the story is a good one. Anyway, the book falls short of a fifth star because the prose feels a little bit clunky, but I recommend this to any of my mathematician friends.
May 22, 2016
This book is one of the most interesting motivational books I have ever read. It is a must read for those who feel they did not find their path in life yet or those who feel that difficulties are prohibiting them from achieving their goals. The personal struggle of one of the world's prominent mathematicians, Ken Ono, that started at an early age (having tiger parents) could have definitely destroyed his life if it wasn't for certain events and certain decisions at certain times motivated by certain people. Few people that dealt with him at the right time in the right place helped him get where he is right now; Ramanujan (the inspiration), Basil Gordon (the self-confidence), Erika, his spouse (safety and support) in addition to other minor players. No one who is familiar with the mathematical work of Ken Ono will believe that this successful guy has passed through all of this in his life.
September 7, 2022
Ono has a powerful story, and he writes it as a symbolic tribute to Ramanujan, his father, to mathematical mentors, to number theory. The connections feel almost divine, which is meta: Ramanujan's work was said to be divinely inspired, and Ken Ono also describes Ramanujan's work as ethereal in feel. The worldly aspects were my favorite part though. I relate to Ono's early struggles with achievement/lack of, balancing priorities and feelings of ineptitude in math. What is unusual about him is the way he approaches life with 100% (in not just math) - he also happens to write in sharp color. Good combination. I feel like this book breathed life into me, and I want to live fearlessly as Ono began to. I do wish there was more math. For a book centered on beautiful/divine math, especially the type of math studied by a man with no formal math training (Ramanujan), there is very little.
September 25, 2018
Definitely this is one of the best motivational book written by one of the best mathematician. This is why I recommend it to everyone especially because of its psychological aspect: no matter what goal you have in this life, you can get it if you trust enough in yourself.
April 19, 2025
It's quite different from other (auto)biographies of/about mathematicians I've read, but it's still enjoyable. Ken Ono is much more emotionally open, maybe due to his generation. It was nice reading about his struggles with self-doubt, his relationship with his parents and their culture, and the way other mathematicians influenced his (and his father's) career. What I enjoyed the most was Ono's transition from seeing math as a mean to an end to seeing it as an end in itself. I wish I had the brains and the discipline to enjoy math as an art, but since I don't, I'll keep reading other biographies 😊
Besides being a great mathematician, Ken sounds like a good, pleasant person to meet and have dinner with. I was also happy to find out that his dad is still alive and that they seem to get along well.
Besides being a great mathematician, Ken sounds like a good, pleasant person to meet and have dinner with. I was also happy to find out that his dad is still alive and that they seem to get along well.
February 1, 2023
A delightful read traversing the life trajectory of a (once) reluctant mathematician Ken Ono who finds inspiration from an unlikely source at several stages in his life. Those who are familiar with Ramanujan and his work will relate to the book even more and its amazing to see the gamut of mathematicians Ramanujan has inspired all over the world. The book is not heavy on the math though the author attempts to briefly describe some of Ramanujan's works. It was heartwarming to see Ken's father finally acknowledging his son's achievements for the first time and gifting his son a letter that Janaki Ammal (Ramanujan's widow) wrote to the dad several years ago.
The author's message 'Live mathematically, but not by the numbers' couldn't be more relevant today.
The author's message 'Live mathematically, but not by the numbers' couldn't be more relevant today.
March 7, 2022
What I liked most about the book were the following ingredients:
1. His description of his youth groing up with very demanding "tiger" parents and his struggles with that. That was very different from how I grew up and therefore I found it very interesting.
2. His brief description of Ramanuan's life and his struggles.
3. His relationship to his mentor and PhD advisor Basil Gordon which sounded fascinating and productive and very much like an ideal mentorship.
The book just shows how important it is not to give up on things you love doing.
1. His description of his youth groing up with very demanding "tiger" parents and his struggles with that. That was very different from how I grew up and therefore I found it very interesting.
2. His brief description of Ramanuan's life and his struggles.
3. His relationship to his mentor and PhD advisor Basil Gordon which sounded fascinating and productive and very much like an ideal mentorship.
The book just shows how important it is not to give up on things you love doing.
June 30, 2021
Bir büyük matematikçinin içinde başka bir büyük matematikçinin izleri bulunan bir özyaşam öyküsü. Herman Hesse'nin Çarklar Arasında, Kafka'nın Babaya Mektup, Hardy'nin Bir Matematikçinin Savunması bir arada bir kitap gibi. Okuduğum en etkili biyografi olabilir.
July 13, 2018
An inspiring and motivational book which almost tells you on every page "You too can become a mathematician." And the path to become just that does not need to be straight path.
June 30, 2019
Despite unconventional twists, turns
struggles and setbacks
Prof Ono's story shows there are many paths
struggles and setbacks
Prof Ono's story shows there are many paths
December 23, 2022
Reads like a novel! A fascinating account of how the great mathematician Ramanujan impacted the life of another reputable mathematician of the present time, Ken Ono.
August 16, 2016
I don't regret being baited and switched into reading this book. And I have only myself to blame for being baited and switched. I expected the book to be more about Ramanujan but instead it was mostly a memoir of a mathematician named Ken Ono. But the fulcrum of the book is Ramanujan. Ono was brought up by Japanese immigrant "tiger parents" who pressured him into being a mathematician. He rebelled to the point of dropping out of high school. But then he found a letter that Ramanujan's widow sent to his father thanking her for a donation to build a statue of him and that set his mind off--with a lag--so that he found himself constantly coming back to Ramanujan, both his life and his specific, unproved ideas. The book includes a 50 page mini-biography of Ramanujan and an appendix that attempts to explain some of his specific ideas. What makes the memoir so interesting is that it is not about a top mathematician but instead about someone struggling to join the profession and contribute and about the struggles, semi-failures, and semi-successes that go with it. My disappointment was that, other than the appendix, it attempts to cover very little of the substance of Ono or Ramanujan.
And if you are looking for a biography of Ramanujan, The Man Who Knew Infinity is one of the best scientific biographies ever written about an amazing and glorious and tragic life and mind.
And if you are looking for a biography of Ramanujan, The Man Who Knew Infinity is one of the best scientific biographies ever written about an amazing and glorious and tragic life and mind.
May 4, 2016
It's hard to classify this book exactly. Mostly, it is the memoirs of Ken Ono, a mathematician at Emory University who was raised in a strict Japanese-American household and struggled to figure out what is path in life should be. Throughout his journey, he draws inspiration from the story (and the work) of the Indian mathematician Ramanujan The book also tells Ramanujan's life story, which is fascinating enough that it has recently been turned into the movie "The Man Who Knew Infinity", which Ono served as a consultant on. Like Ramanujan, Ono's story is gripping and inspirational, and will be of interest even to people who are not generally interested in mathematics. (It's worth noting that while Ono's book discusses the culture of mathematics frequently, actual discussion of the math is mostly relegated to an appendix at the end, for better or for worse)
September 8, 2016
I bought this book, inspired by the new film starring Dev Patel and Jeremy Irons called "The Man who knew Infinity" which I would definitely recommend.
Though this book by Ken Ono isn`t strictly about Ramanujan, it is certainly inspired by his work and I found it to be a fresh and honest insight into the life of a contemporary mathematician and indeed into the world of mathematicians in general. I am not a mathematician and thus glossed over the, thankfully few, theory parts. However, the principle expressed by Dev Patel as Ramanujan in the film that numbers express the patterns of the universe inspires me hugely.
Through this book by Ken Ono, I was given a glimpse into the world in which one might explore such things and I am grateful to him for his candid and often humble descriptions of his own journey deeper and deeper into a world few of us can barely imagine.
Though this book by Ken Ono isn`t strictly about Ramanujan, it is certainly inspired by his work and I found it to be a fresh and honest insight into the life of a contemporary mathematician and indeed into the world of mathematicians in general. I am not a mathematician and thus glossed over the, thankfully few, theory parts. However, the principle expressed by Dev Patel as Ramanujan in the film that numbers express the patterns of the universe inspires me hugely.
Through this book by Ken Ono, I was given a glimpse into the world in which one might explore such things and I am grateful to him for his candid and often humble descriptions of his own journey deeper and deeper into a world few of us can barely imagine.
April 28, 2016
Excellent fast paced book published by Springer-Verlag. Found minor spelling mistakes. The book is about the biography of the youngest of 3 sons of a Japanese family who immigrate to the US after the 2nd WW. Father, mathematics prof, is helped by Andrew Weil. It is the youngest who has problems with "Tiger" parents. He chances upon a letter of how his father helped contribute to the building of a bust in memory of Ramanujan. In short, the biography of Ramanujan is short but the bio of Ken Ono is longer(dual biography, how Ramanujan's life inspire Ken). Ken Ono is recruited by the team who film "The Man Who Knew Infinity". Short work, easy read, was pleasurable. If you're looking for a full bio on Ramanujan, Robert Kanigel's book is excellent.
August 16, 2016
Wow! To think such intelligent people are paid for entertaining themselves with numbers! How many other intelligent people have done wonders for humanity by easing back breaking labor for the masses such as Fulton, Deere, Whitney, Singer etc. How about Salk, Pasteur and the like?
Ono's father had an office at home, ignored the family, and worked on math problems... For who? Who paid him and for what? Quite a mystery for me just a retired computer programmer.
Ono's father had an office at home, ignored the family, and worked on math problems... For who? Who paid him and for what? Quite a mystery for me just a retired computer programmer.
June 15, 2016
Highly recommended for mathematically curious
Very personal and emotional about growing up in an Asian family with high expectations for children to achieve academic excellence. A beautiful story that weaves together the mathematics and life of ramanujan to author's life and his pursuit of academic career and happiness.
Very personal and emotional about growing up in an Asian family with high expectations for children to achieve academic excellence. A beautiful story that weaves together the mathematics and life of ramanujan to author's life and his pursuit of academic career and happiness.
October 12, 2016
Not really what I expected
This is a well-written book and has some information on Ramanujan. But it deals mostly with the author's inner life. It may be of interest to young struggling mathematicians and scientists but for others Mr. Ono's soul-searching may feel a bit overdone.
This is a well-written book and has some information on Ramanujan. But it deals mostly with the author's inner life. It may be of interest to young struggling mathematicians and scientists but for others Mr. Ono's soul-searching may feel a bit overdone.
December 27, 2016
Fascinating to read and full of inspiration.
February 7, 2017
A good read. Once I picked it up, I finished it in one go. Easy read and very relatable too. My respect for the community continues to grow.
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