Whether and how the engineers and chemists might indeed apply Ramanujan’s work to the common purposes of life strikes a sensitive chord in India, beset as it is by practical problems of great urgency and less naturally inclined to trust in research whose rewards may accrue only decades or centuries later. “Several theorems of Ramanujan are now being widely used in subjects like particle physics, statistical mechanics, computer science, cryptology and space travel in the United States—subjects unheard of during Ramanujan’s time,” The Hindu assured its readers in its December 19, 1987 issue. But
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