http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Ramanujan.html

For those of you who have seen Good Will Hunting, you might remember the comparison of Will Hunting, a mathematical prodigy from South Side who works as a janitor, to the great Indian (“dots, not feathers”) mathematician Ramanujan.

What is striking about Ramanujan is that he received little in the way of formal mathematical training, yet is arguably the greatest mathematician to come from India. As an elementary school student, he already inquired far more deeply into the subject matter than the level at which he was taught (after learning about cubic functions, he devoted himself to the impossible task of finding rational solutions to quintic functions). He came across a book during high school called a Synposis of Elementary Results in Pure Mathematics. From this outdated book, he derived theorems that still are used today, taking particular interest in the theory of numbers and computation.

Eventually, his work was discovered, he gained renown within and around the city of Madras, India until the point where professors at Cambridge took interest. The rest of the story is less interesting, but it is to be noted that he retained his religion, humility, and simplicity to the end of his life.

An interesting biography to read for us Harvard students! It’s a lesson that innate curiosity and drive are probably more important to success in mathematics than our expensive, formal education.