Confirmed: PhD means squat.
RE: Confirmed: PhD means squat.
In India in the early 20th century, there was a young provincial kid from a poor village named Srinavasa Ramanujan.
Though he had almost no formal training in pure mathematics, he made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions, including solutions to mathematical problems then considered unsolvable.
Ramanujan initially developed his own mathematical research in isolation at home: according to Hans Eysenck: “He tried to interest the leading professional mathematicians in his work, but failed for the most part.
What he had to show them was too novel, too unfamiliar, and additionally presented in unusual ways; they could not be bothered”.
Seeking mathematicians who could better understand his work, in 1913 he began a postal correspondence with the English mathematician G. H. Hardy, Professor at the University of Cambridge, England.
Recognising Ramanujan’s work as extraordinary, Hardy arranged for him to travel to Cambridge. In his notes, Hardy commented that Ramanujan had produced groundbreaking new theorems, including some that “defeated me completely; I had never seen anything in the least like them before”, some recently proven but highly advanced results.
ALL THESE WITHOUT COLLEGE EDUCATION!
In Cambridge, Ramanujan independently compiled nearly 3,900 results (mostly identities and equations).
Many were completely novel; his original and highly unconventional results, such as the Ramanujan prime, the Ramanujan theta function, partition formulae and mock theta functions, have opened entire new areas of work and inspired a vast amount of further research.
Of his thousands of results, all but a dozen or two have now been proven correct.
Unfortunately, 1919, ill health—now believed to have been hepatic amoebiasis (a complication from episodes of dysentery many years previously)—compelled Ramanujan’s return to India, where he died in 1920 at the age of 32.
Some people are just NATURALLY gifted by God from birth.
There is a book written in his tribute. It should be available at your local library. The title us THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY by Robert Kanigel