# The Man Who Knew Infinity (mathematician Ramanujan biopic): Seen it! **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 24, 2016, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-man-who-knew-infinity-mathematician-ramanujan-biopic-seen-it/755520 "2016-05-24T03:14:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2016, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-man-who-knew-infinity-mathematician-ramanujan-biopic-seen-it/755520/1 "2016-05-24T03:14:55Z")
Thought it was great, though I would have liked to see more “Tamil-looking” actors for the Indian characters. But I guess there aren’t many with the name recognition that Dev Patel has in western cinema. Usually movies about GEEEEEEEENYUSSSSS are quite heavy-handed and amp up the mindless adulation in compensation for not being able to show the work and the thoughts. But I thought this film handled those aspects quite well, though I was still a little dissatisfied. And the actors said mathy things very much the way actual mathematicians would. Very refreshing! Totally recommend seeing it, on a big screen if possible, as the lighting is subtle and I’m not sure I really could have seen everything on a little screen. ---
**Author:** ![SpoilerVirgin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@SpoilerVirgin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpoilerVirgin)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2016, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-man-who-knew-infinity-mathematician-ramanujan-biopic-seen-it/755520/2 "2016-05-24T05:07:15Z")
I can say with absolute confidence that this is the only movie I have ever seen that left me thinking that it should have had more math. I enjoyed the movie (I enjoy any movie with Jeremy Irons), but I left it still wondering exactly what it was that made Ramanujan such a genius, especially since so much of the movie dealt with people who dismissed his work. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2016, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-man-who-knew-infinity-mathematician-ramanujan-biopic-seen-it/755520/3 "2016-05-24T23:15:14Z")
Yeah, I really wished we had seen more of Ramanujan’s interactions with his Madras Port Trust Office colleague [Narayana Aiyer, who was an interesting character in his own right](http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~berndt/articles/snarayanaiyer.pdf). Narayana Aiyer was a quite advanced amateur mathematician who enjoyed puzzle problems in math journals, and he and Ramanujan worked together on math problems most evenings. This would have been a great opportunity to show the fun and collegiality of mathematical discussions on problem-solving, even if the actual language used in short snatches of mathematical dialogue would have been gibberish to most viewers. Here’s a charming puzzle problem from the Journal of the Indian Mathematical Club that Narayana Aiyer published a solution to: > [@](#): > > Tejashri and Atul play a series of games in which each game is won by Tejashri or Atul with equal probability, for a fixed contributed stake on each game. Atul has enough money to play an indefinite number of games, while Tejashri has no money but pretends that she also has sufficient funds to play indefinitely. Show that the probability that Tejashri will be able to maintain her pretension for 2n − 1 games or 2n games is > (1/2)(3/4)(5/6)…((2n-1)/2n) Imagine a cute 5-minute scene of the two colleagues discussing that problem, perhaps inspired by watching a couple of children playing a wagering game. Way more interesting and lighthearted than the rather stale reverential awe of Ramanujan and Janaki talking about BYOOOOOTEEE. Another fact that I think is as touching as anything we saw in the Ramanujan/Janaki relationship: As mentioned in the movie, paper was quite expensive for someone in Ramanujan’s position, so when he and Narayana Aiyer worked on math together, they did their temporary calculations on slates, like the ones schoolchildren used for their sums. When Ramanujan left for England, he and Narayana Aiyer exchanged their slates, for each to remember the other by. Awwwwwww! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2016, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-man-who-knew-infinity-mathematician-ramanujan-biopic-seen-it/755520/4 "2016-05-25T00:21:22Z")
Saw it and quite enjoyed it, although most of the math flew right over my head. A bit of a shame that Dev Patel is the one Indian who can open a film in the US, but he was quite good in it. ---
**Author:** ![Lantern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d26b3c/32.png) [@Lantern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lantern)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2016, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-man-who-knew-infinity-mathematician-ramanujan-biopic-seen-it/755520/5 "2016-05-25T04:28:30Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Yeah, I really wished we had seen more of Ramanujan’s interactions with his Madras Port Trust Office colleague [Narayana Aiyer, who was an interesting character in his own right](http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~berndt/articles/snarayanaiyer.pdf). Narayana Aiyer was a quite advanced amateur mathematician who enjoyed puzzle problems in math journals, and he and Ramanujan worked together on math problems most evenings. This would have been a great opportunity to show the fun and collegiality of mathematical discussions on problem-solving, even if the actual language used in short snatches of mathematical dialogue would have been gibberish to most viewers. > > Here’s a charming puzzle problem from the Journal of the Indian Mathematical Club that Narayana Aiyer published a solution to: > Imagine a cute 5-minute scene of the two colleagues discussing that problem, perhaps inspired by watching a couple of children playing a wagering game. Way more interesting and lighthearted than the rather stale reverential awe of Ramanujan and Janaki talking about BYOOOOOTEEE. You should have been a script consultant ! I found a lot of the Janaki scenes quite tiresome especially the sub-plot about her mother-in-law hiding the letters which was like something from a bad Indian soap opera. I am still puzzled by the decision to make Hardy so old. In reality he was just ten years older than Ramanujan and was 37 when they met. Jeremy Irons is 67 . I guess they wanted some kind of father-son dynamic between the two. Incidentally PC Mahanalobis, the Indian student who befriends Ramanujan, was a real person who later became a major statistician and a key figure in Indian economic planning. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2016, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-man-who-knew-infinity-mathematician-ramanujan-biopic-seen-it/755520/6 "2016-05-25T05:42:58Z")
Thanks! I also think a little more could have been made of the support of Sir Francis Spring, who kept a voluminous correspondence going with various officials and others to try to find backing for Ramanujan’s work. And that could have brought in some responses from some of the other mathematicians who looked at some of Ramanujan’s early results and found that some of his findings on divergent series were actually **wrong**. A lot more could have been fleshed out about mathematics and Ramanujan’s approach to it, shifting the focus from a somewhat trite subaltern-underdog-achieves-stardom-despite-smug-colonial-racist-snobbery tale to a deeper exploration of how an isolated prodigy was able to develop and reveal his insights. And it could have been worked in quite subtly without adding much runtime or replacing “human interest” non-mathematical scenes, which I think generally were very well done. ---
**Author:** ![Lantern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d26b3c/32.png) [@Lantern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lantern)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2016, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-man-who-knew-infinity-mathematician-ramanujan-biopic-seen-it/755520/7 "2016-05-25T19:53:30Z")
Interesting [review](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2707)by Scott Aaronson a computer scientist. This bit boggled my mind: > [@](#): > > I fear that to harp on these defects is to hold the film to impossibly-high, Platonic standards, rather than standards that engage with the reality of Hollywood. An anecdote that Brown related at the end of the Q&A session brought this point home for me. Apparently, Brown struggled for an entire decade to attract funding for a film about a turn-of-the-century South Indian mathematician visiting Trinity College, Cambridge, whose work had no commercial or military value whatsoever. At one point, Brown was actually told that he could get the movie funded, if he’d agree to make Ramanujan fall in love with a white nurse, so that a British starlet who would sell tickets could be cast as his love interest. One can only imagine what a battle it must have been to get a correct explanation of the partition function onto the screen. My assessment of the film has increased significantly after reading stuff like this. My initial reaction was lukewarm but considering the constraints in making a Hollywood film about an Indian mathematician I now think it’s a decent achievement. I only wish we lived in a world where filmmakers made films about mathematics and science which are interesting and accessible while giving us real insights into the work itself. Part of it is an audience problem but I also think there is a “two cultures” problem where few competent filmmakers know much about science. ---
**Author:** ![SpoilerVirgin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@SpoilerVirgin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpoilerVirgin)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2016, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-man-who-knew-infinity-mathematician-ramanujan-biopic-seen-it/755520/8 "2016-05-25T22:20:59Z")
> [@Lantern](#): > > I am still puzzled by the decision to make Hardy so old. In reality he was just ten years older than Ramanujan and was 37 when they met. Jeremy Irons is 67 . I guess they wanted some kind of father-son dynamic between the two. Or they wanted Jeremy Irons (or he was interested in the project, and they went with him because _Jeremy Irons_.) It’s possible that I might have seen the film even without Jeremy Irons, but his role in the film made it a must-see for me. They thankfully decided not to go with the white nurse idea, so a notable, well-recognized, award-winning actor was the next best thing. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2016, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-man-who-knew-infinity-mathematician-ramanujan-biopic-seen-it/755520/9 "2016-05-26T03:52:39Z")
Apparently there’s a [2014 Tamil movie called _Ramanujan_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramanujan_(film)), which explored more of his life in India. I haven’t seen it, though. ---
**Author:** ![1iLeft](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/1ileft/32/4114_2.png) [@1iLeft](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/1iLeft)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-man-who-knew-infinity-mathematician-ramanujan-biopic-seen-it/755520/10 "2016-11-08T17:28:33Z")
On last nights episode (11-8-2016) of [StarTalk - Host Neil deGrasse Tyson interviews actor Jeremy Irons and director Matt Brown](http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/startalk/episodes/jeremy-irons/) and discusses the film “The Man Who Knew Infinity.” They touch on a number of things brought up in this thread. > [@Kimstu](#): > > And the actors said mathy things very much the way actual mathematicians would. Very refreshing! Mathematician Ken Ono talked about his input on getting the “mathy” stuff too sound right. Overall a good episode and left me wanting to see this movie. (along with this thread) ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-man-who-knew-infinity-mathematician-ramanujan-biopic-seen-it/755520/11 "2016-11-08T19:35:55Z")
> [@SpoilerVirgin](#): > > I can say with absolute confidence that this is the only movie I have ever seen that left me thinking that it should have had more math. I felt that way, too. So he’s got personal drama with his mother and wife and the bigots around him… who the fuck cares? In any given decade, there are 1729 forgettable movies about personal struggle - I want to see some _math_, dammit. This and _The Imitation Game_ and really any number of biopics about scientists tend to leave me wanting to go see a good documentary about the subject, free of all the tacked-on or over-emphasized crap meant to play on an audience’s emotions rather than fire their imaginations.