By: Life with Alegria
Fiction and Books, , , , , , , ,

The Man Who Knew Infinity: Friday Fictioneers

The Man Who Knew Infinity. A Friday Fictioneers short story.
Photo Prompt by CEAyr

Srinavasa’s pencil moved quickly across his paper.  He worked briskly, rushed, with urgency, trying to get the thoughts out, and the numbers out of his head.  Calculating, desperately searching for the answer, moving in circles around his desk covered with papers.  Rubbing his chin, eyes to the ceiling, the electricity of his thinking palpable in the air.

Now he was stuck, lost, unsure, when he heard squeals of laughter coming from the pavement below.  He looked down and there as the children ran off, he saw the forgotten skipping rope laying in its perfect design. The answer he sought. Infinity.

100 words

Srinavasa Ramanujan an Indian mathematician, who through his mathematical genius and ability to overcome myriad difficult circumstances discovered and gave the world new mathematical theories, many of which are foundational to current mathematical theorems. 

His notebooks included 17 ways to get to 1/pi much faster and he worked out the mathematical series that included the elliptic integrals, hypergeometric series, and functional equations of the Zeta Function (The infinite series), which is used in statistical analysis today. 

You can read a short biography about him written at the  School of Mathematics and Statistics
University of St Andrews, Scotland

A 2015 movie The Man Who Knew Infinity told his incredible story and is one of my all-time favourite movies.  I love math as much as I love words.

Friday Fictioneers is a place for flash fiction brought to us by the lovely Rochelle Wisoff-Fields. Visit Rochelle’s site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

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