View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What interrupted Ramanujan's wedding?

2. Where did graduates from Hardy's secondary school typically go to college?

3. Who wrote 'A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics'?

4. What energy does Kanigel say Ramanujan redirected into mathematics?

5. What were Ramanujan's parents getting impatient with?

Short Essay Questions

1. What happened after Ramanujan left Pachaiyappas College?

2. What problems in Ramanujan's thinking came from his use of 'A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics'?

3. What work did Ramanujan eventually find?

4. How did Ramanujan's temperament reveal itself when he was a child?

5. What was the subject of the challenge Ramanujan set and then resolved in his first paper?

6. What was the Bloomsbury Group?

7. What does 'A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics' consist of?

8. Why did Ramanujan's parents have a hard time finding a wife for him?

9. How was it that Ramanujan would solve math problems without seeing the logic that dictated the development and solutions to problems?

10. How did Ramanujan's interest change as he grew up?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Describe the influence of education systems on Ramanujan's life. How much is he defined by the systems from which he came? How is he defined by other influences?

Essay Topic 2

In what ways is Ramanujan a product of India? What is it about India that is evident in Ramanujan's character? In what ways is Ramanujan British? In what ways is he not? Is he an international citizen in the universe of math?

Essay Topic 3

What did Ramanujan use math for? What problems did he solve with it? Were they abstract mathematical problems, or life problems? How did math solve Ramanujan's life problems? Where did it fail to?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 656 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample