The number 1729 appears ordinary, but according
to a famous story, mathematician G .H. Hardy
once took a taxi cab numbered 1729 while visiting
Servonavus Ramanujan in the hospital. Hardy remarked
that the number seemed dull, but Ramanujan immediately
replied that it was very interesting. It is the
smallest possible number that can be written
as the sum of two positive cubes in two different
ways. In other words, 1 cubed plus 12 cubed equals
9 cubed plus 10 cubed. Ramanujan saw structure
where others saw, let's call it an unremarkable
number. His notebooks contained thousands of
identities and formulas and observations, and
many of these were developed with little access
to advanced mathematical training or even a community
that was capable of evaluating his work. But
his gift did not make his life easy. As a young
man in India, Ramanujan lived with financial
insecurity. and he struggled to find a place
in institutions that did not know what to do
with his unusual abilities. So he eventually
sent examples of his work to Hardy at Cambridge.
Hardy recognized their significance, and he helped
bring him to England. That recognition changed
Ramanujan's mathematical life, but it did not
remove his vulnerability. He lived far from his
family and culture during the First World War,
and he faced difficulty obtaining food that was
compatible with his diet, and he experienced
serious and prolonged illness. He returned to
India in 1919 and unfortunately died the following
year at the young age of 32. Stories about genius
often imply that extraordinary talent, can overcome
any circumstance. Ramanujan's life suggests something
maybe a little more sobering. Ability does not
eliminate the need for food and health and friendship
or welcome and care. A person may be capable
of astonishing insight, but still be physically
or emotionally fragile. Nor should we say that
hardship created Ramanujan's mathematics. Poverty
did not make his formulas more beautiful, and
isolation did not improve his health. His suffering
may have become part of the meaning of his life,
but that does not make the suffering desirable.
We can admire what he accomplished without treating
deprivation as the price that genius ought to
pay. But the story also contains a hopeful form
of recognition. Hardy could not remove every
hardship, but he did take Ramanujan's ideas seriously.
He read his unfamiliar mathematics, and he responded
to the person behind it. And then he helped create
a place where Ramanujan could work. So, who has
taken your abilities seriously when others did
not? Or, whose overlooked gift might require
your attention? Sometimes hope begins when one
person looks at what others have dismissed as
ordinary and says, yep, there is something important
here.