Once you get beyond the basics of addition and subtraction and multiplication and division, mathematics quickly becomes a pretty esoteric discipline that not a lot of people have a lot of understanding of or interest in. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have its share of compelling stories and characters.
Based on a book by Robert Kanigel, this bio-pic commemorates the life and career of one such individual. Born into poverty in India in 1887, Srinivasa Ramanujan became a self-taught expert in math with a special focus on number theory, infinite series and continuous fractions.
During the height of World War I he journeyed to England to study at Cambridge under British mathematician G.H. Hardy where he encountered resistance based both on his ethnicity and his revolutionary ideas.
The Man Who Knew Infinity, with Dev Patel as Ramanujan and Jeremy Irons as Hardy, screens at the RPL Theatre Friday June 3 at 7 p.m., Saturday June 4 at 9 p.m., and Sunday June 5 at 2:30 p.m. Here’s the trailer: