The Mathematician Nobody Expected from Madras

In 1913, G. H. Hardy, the most distinguished mathematician at Cambridge, received a letter from an unknown clerk in Madras, India. The envelope contained page after page of handwritten theorems — no formal proofs, no academic credentials, just raw mathematical insight from a man named Srinivasa Ramanujan who had no university degree. Hardy's colleagues glanced at the letter and dismissed it.…