Mathematics, mathematicians, and God
Scientific discoveries require mathematics. As MIT’s Tegmark argues “Our physical world doesn’t have some mathematical properties but has only mathematical properties” (Joshi, 2021). Albert Einstein wondered “how it was possible that mathematics does so well in explaining the universe” (Joshi, 2021). Finally, as history has abundantly proven, mathematical achievements are the most enduring ones.
Throughout history, there have been both theists as well as atheist mathematicians. Ironically, Hardy, an atheist, admired the most devout Ramanujan. Paul Dirac, an atheist, wrote that “God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world” (Pismen, L., 2018, p. 18). Erdos, also an atheist, argued that “God has a transfinite book that contains the best possible proofs” (Alsina and Nelsen, 2010, p. ix).
The greatest mathematicians such as Ramanujan, Euler and Gödel were all theists. Physicist Michio Kaku argues that “God is a mathematician” (Big Think, 2013) and James Jeans said that “God appears to be a mathematician” (Spurway, 2009, p. 184).
Indian Civilization, a cradle of spirituality and the powerhouse of mathematical discoveries
Albert Einstein once declared, “We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made” (Rao and Latha, 1995, p 11). As Pierre-Simon Laplace acknowledges, “It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers” (Bhatia 2011, p. 27).
Professor Norman Wildberger argues that Indians were responsible for the single most important scientific achievement of all time. “The greatest single discovery and innovation in the history of mathematics and science put together is the Hindu number system”. He further argues that the introduction of a symbol for zero by Indian mathematicians was an incredibly important advancement in the history of science which he rates ahead of all the other scientific developments
such as Calculus or Einstein’s theory of relativity or quantum mechanics. “Nothing else comes close
to the importance of this in terms of our modern world” he mentions (Wildberger, 2011; Wildberger, 2016).
Finally, the late Berkeley mathematician Seidenberg in his book titled ‘History of Mathematics’ claimed that it was the “the Hindu Sulba Sutras that inspired all mathematics of the ancient world” (Bhangale, 2013).
Greatest Indian mathematicians
India has produced great mathematicians such Aryabhatta, Baskara I & II, Bramhagupta, Madhava and Ramanujan. Dr. Kim Plofker in her book has amply described the contributions of classical Indian mathematicians (Plofker, 2009).
Along with Ramanujan, Bhaskara II was one of the most accomplished Indian mathematicians, who wrote that division by zero yields a number infinite, as the God Vishnu (Schineider, 2015). Madhava, who is the original inventor of the Calculus, used to lie down on the stone of the Sree Krishna temple to study movements of stellar astronomy.
This article emphasizes particularly on Ramanujan, as there is far more reliable material available about him than any other greats.
Ramanujan, God, and his achievements
Ramanujan’s famous quote “An equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God” (Subramanian, 2003, p.75) amply describes his belief in God. Dr. Schneider writes that Ramanujan regarded Vishnu as God and worshiped his local avatar, Narasimha (Schineider, 2015).
In 1913, Ramanujan devolved his mathematical discoveries to the world-famous Cambridge mathematician G.H. Hardy. Professor Strogatz of Cornell comments on that letter that “Hardy sees these formulas, some of which he recognizes as formulas of cutting edge mathematics of his day, some of the formulas completely defeated him. He felt like he was seeing something from another planet. This intelligence was alien to him”. Hardy said “I had never seen anything in the least like before…only a mathematician of the highest class could write them down” (Audiam, 2016).
Fields Medal winner and Princeton Professor Bhargava says Ramanujan was “transforming mathematics each day…. he proved more theories in one day than many of us (world’s top mathematicians) hope to prove in a year.” The succession of how Ramanujan was making leaps in developing formulas and equations were way beyond what anyone could think as humanly possible.
He was proving 100 theorems per day, finding 100 formulas per day” (Audiam, 2016).
Cornell’s Strogatz, continues “His work leads us to the insights about the actual universe. The things that he is seeing in his mind or the Goddess Namagiri (consort of Lord Narasimha) herself presenting through his speech, 80 years later turned out to describe the structure of fundamental physics at the deepest level… how spooky it is, that it was anticipated at his death-bed” (Audiam, 2016).
Ramanujan’s work now forms the basis for superstring theory and multidimensional physics.
Prof Bollobás of Cambridge rated Ramanujan as the most talented mathematician ever in the world “nobody even comes close to him” (Trinity College, Cambridge, 2021).
According to Prof. Ken Ono, just the four pages that Ramanujan wrote in his last notebook at his death-bed are so important that it is leading to a frantic activity at places like Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and Chicago (Stanford, 2018).
Ramanujan’s lost notebook which contains groundbreaking formulas for the 21st century and beyond was about to be incinerated in England. It was mystically salvaged by American mathematician George Andrews. Many mathematicians term this as a great piece of luck, Ramanujan might have said, quite rightly so, was the divine intervention from the Lord Narasimha.
Conclusion
This article emphasizes the omnipotent and omnipresent nature of mathematics. It brings to the understanding that great Indian mathematicians attributed their mathematical prowess to God as they relate to the supreme through its various forms (such as Narasimha, Laxmi and Vishnu). The purpose of this piece is to provide inspiration to researchers to generate path breaking hypotheses for future research.
References
- Alsina Por Claudi and Nelsen Roger, B. (2010). Charming Proofs: A Journey into Elegant Mathematics. The Mathematical Association of America.
- Audiam. (2016).Manjul Bhargava, Steven Strogatz, Matt Brown and Lynn Sherr — The Infinite Mind[Video] . Retrieved 3 July 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvHrn-41XMU.
- Bhangale, R. (2013). Greeks Mathematics | | math learners. Mathlearners.com.[Video] Retrieved 2 July 2019, from http://mathlearners.com/history-of-mathematics/1500-bc-400-ad/greeks/.
- Bhatia, Rajendra (2011). Proceedings of the International Congress of the Mathematicians) Hindustan Book Agency, New Delhi.
- Big Think. (2013). Michio Kaku: Is God a Mathematician? | Big Think . [Video] Retrieved 8 July 2020, from http://youtube.com/watch?v=jremlZvNDuk.
- Joshi, S. (2021). Mathematics is the queen of Sciences . Retrieved 1 December 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mve0UoSxTo.
- Pismen, L. (2018). The Swings of Science – From Complexity to Simplicity and Back. Springer, nature Switzerland.
- Plofker, Kim (2009). Mathematics in India. Princeton University Press. Princeton, NJ. The USA.
- Rao, Bhaskara D. and Latha Pushpa D. (1995). Achievement in Science. Discovery Publishing House, New Delhi.
- Schneider, Robert (2015) Encounter with the Infinite. January 1st, 2015. | Issue One Hundred Eleven. The Believer is published by the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute. https://believermag.com/encounter-with-the-infinite/ Assessed on 6/20/2020
- Spurway, Neil (2009). Theology, Evoluton and the Mind. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. UK.
- Subramanian V. K. (2003). The Great Ones. Abhinav Publications, New Delhi.
- Trinity College, Cambridge. (2021). Prof Béla Bollobás (1963), explains the significance of Indian mathematician Ramanujan [Video]. Retrieved 15 August 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGFK7rhpbWk.
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