Product Description
Chapters: Ancient Indian Mathematicians, Ancient Indian Physicians, Nagarjuna, Brahmagupta, Aryabhata, Sushruta Samhita, Bhāskara I, Baudhayana, Charaka, Pingala, Brahmadeva, Pythagorean Approximation, Madhav, Jayadeva, Vagbhata, Halayudha, Gopala, Aryabhata Ii. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 79. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Brahmagupta (Sanskrit: ; (·)) (598668) was an Indian mathematician and astronomer. Brahmagupta wrote important works on mathematics and astronomy. In particular he wrote Brahmasphutasiddhanta (Correctly Established Doctrine of Brahma), in 628. The work was written in 25 chapters and Brahmagupta tells us in the text that he wrote it at Bhillamala which today is the city of Bhinmal. This was the capital of the lands ruled by the Gurjara dynasty. Brahmagupta was born in 598 CE(it is believed) in Bhinmal city in the state of Rajasthan of northwest India. He likely lived most of his life in Bhillamala (modern Bhinmal in Rajasthan) in the empire of Harsha during the reign (and possibly under the patronage) of King Vyaghramukha. As a result, Brahmagupta is often referred to as Bhillamalacarya, that is, the teacher from Bhillamala Bhinmal. He was the head of the astronomical observatory at Ujjain, and during his tenure there wrote four texts on mathematics and astronomy: the Cadamekela in 624, the Brahmasphutasiddhanta in 628, the Khandakhadyaka in 665, and the Durkeamynarda in 672. The Brahmasphutasiddhanta (Corrected Treatise of Brahma) is arguably his most famous work. The historian al-Biruni (c. 1050) in his book Tariq al-Hind states that the Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun had an embassy in India and from India a book was brought to Baghdad which was translated into Arabic as Sindhind. It is generally presumed that Sindhind is none other than Brahmagupta's Brahmasp...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=297206 ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: Brahmagupta. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 60. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Brahmagupta (Sanskrit: ; (·)) (598668) was an Indian mathematician and astronomer. Brahmagupta wrote important works on mathematics and astronomy. In particular he wrote Brahmasphutasiddhanta (Correctly Established Doctrine of Brahma), in 628. The work was written in 25 chapters and Brahmagupta tells us in the text that he wrote it at Bhillamala which today is the city of Bhinmal. This was the capital of the lands ruled by the Gurjara dynasty. Brahmagupta was born in 598 CE(it is believed) in Bhinmal city in the state of Rajasthan of northwest India. He likely lived most of his life in Bhillamala (modern Bhinmal in Rajasthan) in the empire of Harsha during the reign (and possibly under the patronage) of King Vyaghramukha. As a result, Brahmagupta is often referred to as Bhillamalacarya, that is, the teacher from Bhillamala Bhinmal. He was the head of the astronomical observatory at Ujjain, and during his tenure there wrote four texts on mathematics and astronomy: the Cadamekela in 624, the Brahmasphutasiddhanta in 628, the Khandakhadyaka in 665, and the Durkeamynarda in 672. The Brahmasphutasiddhanta (Corrected Treatise of Brahma) is arguably his most famous work. The historian al-Biruni (c. 1050) in his book Tariq al-Hind states that the Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun had an embassy in India and from India a book was brought to Baghdad which was translated into Arabic as Sindhind. It is generally presumed that Sindhind is none other than Brahmagupta's Brahmasphuta-siddhanta. Although Brahmagupta was familiar with the works of astronomers following the tradition of Aryabhatiya, it is not known if he was familiar with the work of Bhaskara I, a contemporary. Brahmagupta had a plethora of criticism ...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=297206 ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: Srinivasa Ramanujan, Satyendra Nath Bose, Patañjali, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Sarvadaman Chowla, Pāṇini, Madhava of Sangamagrama, Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi, Subhash Kak, Nilakantha Somayaji, C. P. Ramanujam, S. R. Ranganathan, Rajeev Motwani, Jyesthadeva, Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao, R. C. Bose, D. R. Kaprekar, Parameshvara, K. S. S. Nambooripad, S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan, Narendra Karmarkar, S. N. Roy, Radhanath Sikdar, Prabhu Lal Bhatnagar, Varahamihira, A. M. Mathai, Harish-Chandra, Amiya Charan Banerjee, Acharya Hemachandra, Sharadchandra Shankar Shrikhande, Śrīpati, S. S. Abhyankar, C. S. Seshadri, A. A. Krishnaswami Ayyangar, Sankara Varman, List of Indian Mathematicians, S. Ramanan, Debabrata Basu, K. S. Chandrasekharan, Aravind Joshi, Manjul Bhargava, M. Ram Murty, Hansraj Gupta, Kātyāyana, K. G. Ramanathan, Pingala, Suresh Venapally, Venkatesan Guruswami, M. S. Narasimhan, Raman Parimala, Mathukumalli V. Subbarao, Manindra Agrawal, V. S. Huzurbazar, Poondi Kumaraswamy, Ramachandran Balasubramanian, Vatasseri Parameshwaran Nambudiri, Ravindran Kannan, P Kesava Menon, D. K. Ray-Chaudhuri, Narayana Pandit, Bhama Srinivasan, Achyuta Pisharati, Raghu Raj Bahadur, Ramchundra, Kannan Soundararajan, Mahavira, Ramaiyengar Sridharan, Vijay Kumar Patodi, Gangesha Upadhyaya, K. R. Parthasarathy, Chandrashekhar Khare, Manava, Kelallur Neelakandhan Somayaji, Thiruvenkatachari Parthasarathy, Ramaswamy S. Vaidyanathaswamy, Govindasvāmi, Tirukkannapuram Vijayaraghavan, Vikraman Balaji, Lalla, Jagannatha Samrat, Srinivasacharya Raghavan, Cadambathur Tiruvenkatacharlu Rajagopal, Sankara Variar, Rahul Pandharipande, Madabusi Santanam Raghunathan, Damodara, Chennas Narayanan Namboodiripad, Yativrsabha, Subbayya Sivasankaranarayana Pillai, Puthumana Somayaji, Kamalakara, Mahendra Suri, Govindsvamin, Virasena, Virahanka, Achyuta Panikkar, Sankara Narayana, Vateshvara, Munishvara, Vijayanandi. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 346. No...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=47717 ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (30)

An very rich book, and successful, book
I will not attempt to improve upon the descriptions of the book that others have provided.I will say that Mr. Leavitt may have done a himself, and the reader, a small disservice by titling the book The Indian Clerk, insofar as the title seems to promise a story of and about Ramanujan.Instead, Leavitt uses Ramanujan to provide the book's unifying framework:the book is really about a time and a place (Cambridge before and during WW 1) while trying to tie together important ideas about cultures colliding and complex people whose lives change forever (or, in some cases, don't change at all) as they cope with love, separation, war, longing, desire and the life of the mind (including, of course, mathematics).Leavitt uses a particularly challenging device--the unreliable narrator (Hardy)--through whose eyes we see Ramanujan and dozens of other characters, places and events.And to make things more complicated, Hardy's own perception changes over time so that the story unfolds on many levels simultaneously.

Leavitt does not always succeed but the fact that he mostly succeeds is simply marvelous. Leavitt has faithfully recreated the world in which Ramanujan lived for several years while being faithful to the people, the places and ideas that are the subject for the novel.

Don't read this book if you want a historical novel that will hand you "Ramanujan" in one piece.By the time you put the book down, however, you will know "Ramanujan", and the world he lived in, very well, indeed.

Far Off Target
The title, "The Indian Clerk" is totally misleading. The title takes advantage of people like me.After reading the "Man Who Knew Infinity", I wanted to know more about Ramanujan.Little did I realize that "The Indian Clerk" is mostly about treating homosexuality as if it is acceptable and normal.There are many readers like myself who think of "romance" between two men as being abhorrent and who are not at all interested in reading about it.I read through it grudgingly.I would have preferred to give this "work" no star.

Written With a Tabloid Writer's MIndset
Fictional biography is a genre in which the author, freed of all constraints of historical facts and truth, canchoose to say whatever he is inclined to and put all sorts of words and thoughts in the mouths and heads of his subjects. The background of his novel, University of Cambridge in the early part of the 20th century, was the playground of the intellectual giants of mathematics, the sciences, and philosophy. However, when observing these giants on their home turf, all that Leavitt can take in is their sexual oddities, personal details like bad breath, and their human failings as imagined and perceived by him. The effect is like a gossip or celebrity columnist doing an Einstein interview.

So anyway, onto this stage walks in Ramanujan, the Indian mathematician. Leavitt then proceeds to portray him using the style in which he portrayed Keynes, Russell, and others. Thus, based on the writer's vivid imagination, we are informed that Ramajujan had a wickedly possessive mother who drove out his wife, that she was possessed of primitive but evil intelligence, and that she basically had an eye on his future earnings. Poor Ramanujan is then made the object of his English host's wife's amorous advances, complete with some fairly specific details that Leavitt is able to dream up.

An intelligent portrayal of Ramanujan's mathematical work is obviously not within the author's capability; however, he could at least have researched the man a little more. Ramanujan's picture that comes out is both distorted and blurred, a bit like a caricature, and totally lacking in context, because his years in India are not covered and his years in Cambridge are mostly described in the tabloid style.

All in all, a book in extremely poor taste, short on historical biography, very long on trash-talk.

Read At Your own Risk!
in my estimate, the author has used Ramanujan's mathamatical notoriety as a "come on" to draw an audience.Unfortunately this book of fiction seems to be a platform on which Mr. Leavitt embroiders homosexual and dream episodes through G. H. Hardy's character.This reader felt that this story was not about Ramanujan, but about the rather anal (as portrayed) G. H. Hardy.

This reader did enjoy parts of the book portraying a Don's view at Cambridge, the First World War, as well as cultural aspects of the time in England.Since I have enjoyed considerable mathematics, the brief discussions related to Hardy's and Ramanujan's math sessions were of interest to me.Certainly such Indian students such as Ramanujan were treated with some disrespect and often had much difficulty blending into English culture.

Will I pass this book on?Probably not.Will I recommend it as a good read for math-minded people?No.There are other much more informative books (The Man Who Knew infinity, for example).Read Hardy's, A Mathematician's Apology.The Indian Clerk to me is similar to a cruise ship often lost at sea with no port of call.Personally,I was relieved when the 478th page was finished, but saddened at Ramanujan's death in India at age 33.

For reference, the Sources and Acknowledgements section might be worth one's time without having to mush through the book.

A great book for the homosexuals
I am getting tired of getting books without being warned about the content... luckily David Leavitt did me a favour by emphasising that the "romantic" relationship between the 2 male characters of the book early. It took only a few flipping of the pages for me to decide I would not like to read 400+ pages of such a book. And so, I lost my money by trowing the book into the gabage. Unless you are trilled by books on homosextuality, skip this one. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Science and Its Times, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 1189 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.The histories of science, technology, and mathematics merge with the study of humanities and social science in this interdisciplinary reference work. Essays on people, theories, discoveries, and concepts are combined with overviews, bibliographies of primary documents, and chronological elements to offer students a fascinating way to understand the impact of science on the course of human history and how science affects everyday life. Entries represent people and developments throughout the world, from about 2000 B.C. through the end of the twentieth century. ... Read more