Ramanujan now there's a story !
Everyone go get the book ‘Ramanujan: The Man Who Knew Infinity”.
Almost completely self-taught!
“Everyone go get the book ‘Ramanujan: The Man Who Knew Infinity’.”
Or at least go to the Wikipedia page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan
Unbelievable guy - he has virtually no resources, so he starts discovering this stuff in math. He passes it on to the best mathematicians in the world, which were in London (yea, those were the days). The guys in London laugh at his work - it had already been discovered and published. Then they keep reading and say...
...holy crap, this stuff is ground-breaking! He was the smartest mathematical mind in his day, and he had some serious competition. It would up that he no idea what had been published (with his limited resources in India), which is why he repeated that work (which was no trivial feat in itself).