“The world is a huge place.”
Ken Ono, Thomas Jefferson Professor of Mathematics at the University of Virginia and vice president of the American Mathematical Society, radiates awe when explaining his decision to launch the Spirit of Ramanujan STEM Talent Initiative (SoR).
The project’s namesake, Srinivasa Ramanujan, was a late nineteenth-century, self-taught Indian mathematician who from childhood filled notebooks with formulas that were decades more advanced than those of his Western contemporaries. Lacking formal education and describing his ideas as visions from a Hindu family goddess, however, he had trouble finding a receptive audience among European scholars.
Fortunately, there was one exception: Cambridge University mathematician G. H. Hardy, who recognized Ramanujan’s singular genius and invited him to study with him during World War I in England. During this time, Ono explains, Ramanujan “rewrote much of modern math.”
Although Ramanujan died at the young age of 32, his discoveries continue to impact vital scientific fields such as signal processing, cell phone technology, and gravitational wave studies.
“Scientists still go back over his notebooks,” Ono says. But had Hardy not given Ramanujan the opportunity to study and publish, the brilliant thinker’s insights would have been lost to history.
“That’s why we call it the ‘spirit,’” Ono explains, referring to Spirit of Ramanujan’s title. “It’s the idea of, What if he had never been discovered? What if [Hardy] had not responded to his letter?”
By awarding grants to promising young STEM scholars all over the world, SoR aims to support today’s Ramanujans, talented young people throughout the world who may lack access to the opportunities they need to fully develop their genius.
To date, the organization has awarded funding to 66 recipients worldwide in 16 countries. Past winners have gone on to win awards in global forums such as the Regeneron Science Talent Search and the International Math Olympiads. Ono notes that although around half of the recipients are from the United States, they are working to expand the program’s reach into more regions. In 2021, SoR awarded its first fellowship to a Central American scholar, Fernando Trejos of Costa Rica.
Although the awards are not large—the average is $5,000—they can still make a significant difference in the lives of their recipients, some of whose families make as little as $1,000 a year. “For most of the world,” Ono adds, “$5,000 goes a very long way.”
The project first came together when Ono served as associate producer and mathematics consultant for Pressman Film’s The Man Who Knew Infinity, a feature film about Ramanujan’s life starring Dev Patel and Jeremy Irons.
Ono was asked to participate in a Q&A panel about the film at a Breakthrough Foundation dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. As he conversed with the other panelists, he had an epiphany: “What we really need to do . . . is recognize that someone like Ramanujan came from Planet Earth.”
Ono was inspired to launch an initiative that would reach out to the towns and villages where more brilliant minds surely lived. He received two-year funding from TWCF to pilot the project, and continued support from the foundation thereafter.
SoR awards between 20 and 30 fellowships per year, from a mix of direct applications and referrals. Although past recipients have ranged in age from eight years old to mid-twenties, most are in late high school or early college.
“It’s hard to describe the prototypical winner,” says Ono. The 2021 recipients, for instance, include eight-year-old Mingyang Cen of California, who is currently enrolled in math courses at UC Berkeley, and fourteen-year-old Shreya Hegde of India, who is conducting research on gravitational waves with astrophysicist Eric Myers. Recipients often use their funds to purchase educational resources, attend prestigious math and science camps, and study with mentors in their fields of interest.
The SoR initiative has become widely known for its role in fostering global talent in STEM, with National Geographic recently recognizing it alongside the MacArthur Fellowship in the magazine’s summer 2018 issue on genius.
“It’s mind-boggling what some of these people are able to achieve, and rewarding that we can facilitate them.” Ono notes that many of the winners are now enrolled in some of the best graduate programs in the world.
The 2021 Spirit of Ramanujan Awardees are:
Applications for the 2022 awards are being accepted now through April 30, 2022. To learn more about the Spirit of Ramanujan STEM Talent Initiative or apply, visit the project’s website or Facebook page.
