In 1913 an eminent Cambridge mathematician. D.H. Hardy, received a most unusual letter from the Indian subcontinent, containing nine pages of wild and unimaginable theorems about infinite series and number theory, ideas that were to cause a sensation in the world of mathematics.

The author was Srinivasa Ramanujan, a 26 year old clerk, a mathematical genius with no formal qualifications. Hardy was bewildered and excited, and in 1914 persuaded Ramanujan to travel to Cambridge, forming a historic partnership which forever linked their names in the history of mathematics.

Ramanujan suffered persistent ill health, the climate and wartime food in England contributing to his gradual decline. He finally returned to India in 1919 where he died just one year later at the age of only 32, leaving behind notebooks filled with thousands of examples of his mathematical genius. The images of sari silk are a reference to his father's work in one of the many sari shops in his home town of Kumbakonum, famous for the production of fine silks.