Elige un idioma

Srinivasa Ramanujan1900s-1910s, India and Cambridge

Ramanujan and the goddess Namagiri

One of history's greatest mathematicians told friends that his family goddess showed him formulas in his dreams.

Esta página aún no está disponible en el idioma que elegiste (Español), así que estás viendo la versión en inglés.

BorradorEsta página aún no ha sido revisada por un editor.

El sueño

Narrado con nuestras propias palabras a partir de las fuentes indicadas abajo, sin citas textuales.

Srinivasa Ramanujan, the self-taught Indian mathematician, grew up devoted to Namagiri, the goddess of his family's temple at Namakkal. Friends later recalled him saying that she wrote equations on his tongue, or showed him mathematics in dreams.

One recollection, recorded by his biographer, describes dreams in which drops of blood signalled the presence of the god Narasimha, Namagiri's consort, after which scrolls of complicated mathematics would unfold before his eyes. In one, a hand wrote elliptic integrals on a red screen.

De dónde viene la historia

Ramanujan went from a clerk's job in Madras to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1914, invited by the mathematician G. H. Hardy, and died in 1920 aged 32. He left notebooks full of results, many stated without proof, that mathematicians are still working through.

The dream stories do not come from Ramanujan's own writings. Robert Kanigel, in The Man Who Knew Infinity (1991), collected them from the memories of people who knew him, and presents them as their recollections.

Cómo se ha interpretado

Historia

Kanigel suggests that Ramanujan kept this side of himself away from Hardy, a committed atheist, and that the stories tell us how his friends understood his gift as much as how he did. They are sincere testimony, but not a record in his own words.

Investigación

People who think intensely about one domain tend to dream about it. Mathematicians and chess players report dreams in their own language of symbols; what is remarkable in Ramanujan's case is less the dreaming than the mind that was dreaming.

Preguntas para tus propios sueños

  1. What subject do you know so well that it appears in your dreams?
  2. Does your family have a faith or figure who appears to you at night?
  3. Who do you share the spiritual side of your work with, and who do you hide it from?

Símbolos de este sueño

¿Has tenido un sueño que no has podido olvidar?

Contar mi sueño

Fuentes

Todas las interpretaciones de esta página se basan en estas obras. Aún no se han comprobado todas las referencias a páginas; las pendientes están marcadas.

  1. Robert Kanigel (1991). The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

    citado, no reproducido

    • Ubicación de la cita: chapters on his family goddess and working methods (referencia aún sin comprobar)
    • Ubicación de la cita: chapters on Hardy and on faith (referencia aún sin comprobar)

  2. G. William Domhoff (2003). The Scientific Study of Dreams: Neural Networks, Cognitive Development, and Content Analysis. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

    citado, no reproducido

    • Ubicación de la cita: continuity hypothesis (referencia aún sin comprobar)

  3. Deirdre Barrett (2001). The Committee of Sleep. New York: Crown.

    citado, no reproducido

    • Ubicación de la cita: chapter on mathematics (referencia aún sin comprobar)

    Harvard psychologist on dreams and creative problem solving, with historical examples.