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1+FIGURE 105.. Srinivasa Ramanujan
and one of his strange Indian melodies.results together in a packet of papers, and sent them all to the un-
forewarned Hardy with a covering letter which friends helped him express
in English. Below are some excerpts taken from Hardy's description of his
reaction upon receiving the bundle:... It soon became obvious that Ramanujan must possess much more general
theorems and was keeping a great deal up his sleeve .... [Some formulae]
defeated me completely; I had never seen anything in the least like them
before. A single look at them is enough to show that they could only be
written down by a mathematician of the highest class. They must be true
because, if they were not true, no one would have had the imagination to
invent them. Finally ... the writer must be completely honest, because great
mathematicians are commoner than thieves or humbugs of such incredible
skill.^2What resulted from this correspondence was that Ramanujan came to
England in 1913, sponsored by Hardy; and then followed an intense
collaboration which terminated in Ramanujan's early demise at age thirty-
three from tuberculosis.
Ramanujan had several extraordinary characteristics which set him
apart from the majority of mathematicians. Om. was his lack of rigor. Very
often he would simply state a result which he would insist, had just come toChurch, Turing, Tarski, and Others 563