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Great Lives

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Factual: Life Stories

Biographical series in which guests choose someone who has inspired their lives.

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Matthew Parris

Akram Khan

Robin Wilson

Toby Field

Great Lives: Akram Khan on Srinivasa Ramanujan

Akram Khan on Srinivasa Ramanujan

BBC Radio 4 - Great Lives, Akram Khan on Srinivasa Ramanujan

One of the UK's leading choreographers nominates the Indian mathematician Ramanujan.

Choreographer Akram Khan chooses the intellectually daring Indian mathematician, Ramanujan. With Matthew Parris. From 2017.

In 1914, a self-taught Mathematics student named Ramanujan left India for Trinity College Cambridge.

Here, alongside the celebrated English mathematician GH Hardy, he completed some extraordinary work on Pi and prime numbers. 

What was even more extraordinary was that he couldn't prove a lot of his work, and attributed many of his theories to a higher power.

For the renowned UK choreographer Akram Khan, there is a beauty in patterns and maths, and he sees Ramanujan's genius as a clash between Eastern and Western cultures. 

Together with presenter Matthew Parris, he explores the mathematician's life. 

Guest Professor Robin Wilson, who once visited Ramanujan's home, takes them through some of the maths, and explains why you'll never look at the number 1729 in the same way again.

Producer: Toby Field.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January 2017.

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