a family of smart people

[sergebroom]

Ever heard of Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920)? Today, I discovered that he was the greatgreatgranduncle of my smarter younger co-worker who's leaving my employer for greener pastures. I was suitably impressed.

Here is a link to a bio:
http://www.usna.edu/Users/math/meh/ramanujan.html

Comments

[pedanther]

I had, actually, though I had to look him up before I remembered what I'd heard of him.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

When I read thae above link's bio, I was amused at Hardy's having said that Ramanujan's results were "arrived at by a process of mingled argument, intuition, and induction, of which he was entirely unable to give any coherent account". That's exactly how my co-worker worked out database and programming problems. We'd then just nod and let him do what needed to be done.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Cool. I've known about Ramanujan for years.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

I'm amazed nobody ever made a film about him.