Just as rice is unable to grow in the British Isles, Srinivasa Ramanujan struggled to survive in Cambridge; the mathematical genius may have eventually gained the recognition he desired but, removed from his Hindu religion, tradition, and culture, he suffered in his personal life.
A devout Brahmin from rural Tamil Nadu, India, Ramanujan traveled to the cold, industrial, Christian modernity of England a few months prior to the outbreak of World War I. Once in Cambridge, Ramanujan was befriended by his sponsor and mentor G.H. Hardy who was Ramanujan’s opposite: Hardy, a classically trained and celebrated mathematician, and Ramanujan, a self-taught savant inspired by his goddess Namagiri Amman. In England, Ramanujan faced estrangement from his family and culture, deteriorating health, struggles for recognition by his peers, and periods of physical isolation due to illness. But he also had friends including the North family who provide a fictional window into daily life in turn-of-the-century Britain.
A historical fiction, The Language of Equals, is told from Srinivasa Ramanujan’s perspective and portrays his religious devotion, his passion for mathematics, and the every-day culture of his homeland as recollected during his encounters with British society in Cambridge, England under the dark cloud of WWI.
