The Man Who Knew Infinity Index May 2026

1. "An equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God."

2. "I owe you more than I can say."

3. "The man who knew infinity"

| Period | Key Events | Approximate Chapters | |--------|------------|----------------------| | 1887–1903 | Childhood in Kumbakonam; early fascination with numbers | 1–2 | | 1904–1912 | College failures; independent research; notebook period | 3–5 | | 1913 | First letters to G.H. Hardy at Cambridge | 6–7 | | 1914–1916 | Voyage to England; collaboration with Hardy | 8–12 | | 1917–1918 | Wartime hardships; illness; FRS election | 13–16 | | 1919 | Return to India; final year | 17–18 | | 1920 | Death in Kumbakonam | 19–20 | the man who knew infinity index

Search the index for "self-taught" or “education, formal.” You will find two clusters: early pages (where Kanigel discusses Ramanujan failing his college exams due to neglecting non-mathematical subjects) and later pages (where Hardy teaches Ramanujan what a proof actually means). The index reveals that Kanigel subtly debunks the myth—Ramanujan was mentored, first by Carr’s Synopsis of Pure Mathematics (see index under “Carr, George Shoobridge”), then by Hardy. 3. "The man who knew infinity"

A copy of the 1991 first edition (ISBN 0-684-19259-4) was used. The index spans pages 429–438 (10 pages). All 1,142 main entries and subentries were manually coded into five categories: the man who knew infinity index

Subentries were counted separately. Descriptive statistics were generated.