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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. In his letter to Hardy, what did Ramanujan say he had discovered?

2. How does Kanigel describe Ramanujan when he returned to India?

3. With whom did Ramanujan eventually begin to develop a real relationship, according to Kanigel?

4. What did Ramanujan and Hardy develop for working with partitions?

5. What does Kanigel say prevented Ramanujan from getting the care he needed?

Short Essay Questions

1. What did Ramanujan write to Hardy?

2. Where did Ramanujan go when he reached England?

3. What was Ramanujan's condition when he returned to India?

4. What problem kept Ramanujan from coming to England, as Hardy hoped he would?

5. What was Ramanujan's Master Theorem intended to do?

6. Ramanujan kept extensive notes of his thinking. What was in Ramanujan's notebooks, and how much of his work was valuable, according to Kanigel?

7. Describe Ramanujan's trip to England.

8. Describe Ramanujan and Hardy's work on partitions.

9. What is a formalist in mathematical thinking?

10. What cultural practices did Ramanujan hold on to from India?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Was Ramanujan different 'as a person' than he was 'as a mathematician'? Did his work in math redeem the discomforts or failures he suffered elsewhere in his life? How does his life balance out--was he a mathematician, or a fully-developed human being, who could adjust to any number of human experiences?

Essay Topic 2

Ramanujan once ran away from home. Describe his relationship with his family, and the running-away temperament: what was he running to? Cite another time when he 'ran away' from things? Did he ever have a feeling of arrival in a place that redeemed the problems with his family or immediate environment?

Essay Topic 3

What did Ramanujan use math for? What problems did he solve with it? Were they abstract mathematical problems, or life problems? How did math solve Ramanujan's life problems? Where did it fail to?

(see the answer keys)

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