Trivia

Throughout his life, Srinivasa Ramanujan was plagued by health problems. His health worsened in England. A 1994 analysis of Ramanujan's medical records and symptoms by Dr. D. A. B. Young concluded that it was much more likely he had hepatic amoebiasis, an illness then widespread in Madras, rather than tuberculosis. He had two episodes of dysentery before he left India. When not properly treated, dysentery can lie dormant for years and lead to hepatic amoebiasis. Amoebiasis was a treatable and often curable disease at the time.

When Littlewood and Srinivasa Ramanujan enter the quadrangle in Trinity College, Littlewood points to the tree from which Isaac Newton's apple [supposedly] fell. But this incident, if true, most likely did not occur at Cambridge, which had been closed for a semester due to an outbreak of bubonic plague. Instead, it would have occurred at Newton's mother's farm, where he spent the semester.

In Good Will Hunting (1997) when Stellan Skarsgård is trying to convince Robin Williams to take on Matt Damon he compares him to Srinivasa Ramanujan as an example of his extraordinary ability.

Srinivasa Ramanujan married Janaki (Janakiammal) in July 1909 when she was only 10 years old. Janaki stayed in her maternal home till she was 12 and then Janaki and Ramanujan's mother came to live with him in Madras.

When Srinivasa Ramanujan is leaving, G.H. Hardy mentions he took a cab with an uninteresting number: 1729. Ramanujan says that 1729 is interesting because it is the smallest integer that can be summed by two cubes of positive integers in two different ways. The integers and the sums are 1 and 12, and 9 and 10. (1 + 1728, and 729 + 1000). At the end of the movie, Hardy chooses to take (another? the same?) cab, with the number plate "CE1729". (In real life, the exchange between Hardy and Ramanujan took place in Ramanujan's hospital room.) Such numbers which are the sums of two cubes are now called "taxicab numbers" by number theorists.