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I don't think you appreciate how crazy Ramanujan was in his time. While he was somewhat appreciated in India (not at any high level though), when he reached out to professors in the UK, the first several thought he had no ability to become a mathematician. They were used to seeing mathematical proofs, and Ramanujan not providing any made him appear fraudulent. The only one who understood his brilliance was G.H. Hardy, also considered an eccentric by his peers. In Ramanujan's words, "an equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God". In mathematician circles of the early 20th century, this was an obscene statement. Even today, can you imagine a researcher in any field saying something like that, and being taken seriously? Yet Ramanujan is probably one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. In Hardy's word, he had "never met his equal, and can compare [Ramanujan] only with Euler or Jacobi". To think that "we" (whoever you mean by that) can recognize sheer talent of Ramanujan's type is, frankly, arrogant. If anything, the ivory towers are even more enclosed - research is more and more about the quantity of publications, not about the quality of ideas. A recent Nobel Laureate stated that if he had not received the Nobel Prize, his university would have probably fired him, for lack of a consistent publication record. So no, I don't agree with your statement. While the scientific method you describe for approaching nature has worked tremendously well for understanding the world, it still completely fails to capture the core of what it is that makes a person a true genius. |