At the age of 15, Srinivasa Ramanujan was inspired to study mathematics by a copy of a book by George Carr, a list of 4,400 classical mathematical results, without proof. Ramanujan spent the following years proving, with his own mathematics, as many assertions as possible. And it wouldn’t be long before his notebooks filled with results not found in Carr’s book. Ramanujan claimed to be guided by the goddess Namagiri, protector of his family and consort of Narashima, the lion god, the fourth incarnation of Vishnu. Ramanujan wrote to English mathematicians, and soon someone (Hardy) at Cambridge recognized the Indian’s mathematical genius. A devout Brahmin and strict vegetarian, he had several difficulties integrating in England, where he arrived in 1914.
