Ramanujans of Today

Let me begin with this famous story of great Indian mathematician Ramanujan. He was ill and was admitted in a hospital in London. His British mathematician friend G. H. Hardy paid him a courtesy visit. Hardy came with a taxi and he just referred to Ramanujan that the number of the taxi he rode was quite uninteresting and he could not make any sense out of the number. The number was “1729”. Hearing this number, Ramanujan immediately became excited and told his friend that this is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways. It can be one cube plus twelve cube or nine cube plus ten cube. Today mathematicians have found many other interesting properties of this number and this number has been named as Hardy-Ramanujan number. Numbers have always fascinated many people in many different ways. In recent years a new fad about numbers has evolved in the form of changing names of people based on numerological luck. I know some people who really charge very high fee to change names. They will add an additional ‘k’ or an additional ‘s’ or any other alphabet, that will suit a certain numerological summation of their names. These so called numerology based astrologers have celebrity clientele and are advertising themselves as fortune changers. I also observe an interesting thing that such clientele often comes from a very highly educated class. Obviously this kind of business is flourishing much more in metros than in smaller towns. I call these astrologers as Ramanujans of today. 

This comparison came to my mind as I found that one such person was also using name of Ramanujan and Aryabhatt to prove that what he is doing is all scientific in nature. He claims that this is our ancient knowledge from the period of Vedas. Such people use the same fear psychosis that is used by other religious contractors to trap you on account of making your future. Sometimes I feel that rational people are falling short in fighting such increasing trend of superstition in our society. I see that even the media of modern times promote it for their monetary benefits. I would be happy if at least one another person can hear my feeble voice and make it a little more louder, so that it can be heard louder in years to come.

Dr. Sunil Ji Garg