The true story of India-born Srinavasa Ramanujan, a self-taught mathematical prodigy. In 1913, when he was a 25-year-old clerk who had flunked out of two colleges, he mailed a letter containing his own original theorems to the noted English mathematician G. H. Hardy. Hardy, impressed by the young man's genius, brought Ramanujan to England. Over the next five years, the vegetarian Brahmin, who said that his many discoveries were brought to him by a Hindu goddess, generated highly influential mathematical work. In England, however, he was isolated from his wife back home in India, and the cold, fatherly demeanour of Hardy further left Ramanujan feeling alone and depressed. He returned to India in 1919 and died a year later of tuberculosis.