1Not Giving Up On Rejection
He had ideas that would transform mathematics and no one to read them. So in 1911,
Srinivasa Ramanujan, a two-time college dropout working as a low-level clerk in southern India,
began submitting his work to local mathematics journals and, when they went largely unnoticed,
writing letters to mathematicians overseas. He enclosed pages of his groundbreaking theorems
and the patterns he was finding in numbers; no proofs, just bursts of mathematical insight.
In 1913 he finally got a response, from Cambridge mathematician G. H. Hardy. The
renowned English number theorist saw the brilliance of Ramanujan’s work and became his mentor
and champion, bringing Ramanujan to Cambridge, and his work to a wider audience.
”I did not invent him-like other great men, he invented himself,” Hardly later said of
Ramanujan, ”but I was the first really competent person who had the chance to see some of his
work, and recognized at once what a treasure I had found.”
Today mathematician Ken Ono, Professor of Mathematics at Emory University and a
renowned number theorist himself, is on a hunt for those with similar undiscovered potential. His
Spirit of Ramanujan Math Talent Initiative is a global research that seeks out gifted young
mathematicians from modest backgrounds and pairs them with mentors and academic
opportunities.
Ono has long felt a connection and kinship with Ramanujan. As a specialist in algebraic
number theory, Ono, like Ramanujan, seeks new patterns and truths in integers. He drew on the
Indian mathematician’s work in his doctoral thesis and found his footing as a mathematician in part
by confirming some of Ramanujan’s ideas on partition functions.
(Adapted from: University of Chicago Magazine)
After you read the text above, answer the following questions.
1. What does paragraph 1 tell you about?
2. As the person who found Ramanujan’s talent, in spite admitting the invention in
groundbreaking theorems and its patterns as Hardy’s work, how did Hardy see himself as a
competent person regarding his apprentice Ramanujan?
3. Skim and summarize the content of the article, based on the title, the first and last paragraphs
in less than 5 sentences using your own words.
20

BING4104
2 dari 4
2
The atmosphere is
the gaseous envelope that
protects the Earth against
dangerous radiation from
space and enables the
development and existence
of life on our planet. The
approximately 100 km – thick
atmosphere of Earth is merely
a thin layer, relative to the
Earth’s diameter of 12.756 km
at the Equator. The
percentage of gaseous parts
varies depending on altitude,
and the air pressure
decreases with increasing
altitude, enabling the
atmosphere can be
categorized as distinct
vertical layers. The layer
closest to the Earth is the troposphere, where practically all weather occurs. It contains more than
90 percent air and most of the water vapor in the atmosphere. At the poles, this layer is up to 7 km
high, while along the Equator it can reach up to 18 km. The temperature of the troposphere
decreases toward the upper boundary (tropopause) at a rate of about 6,5 °C/km. In the next later,
the stratosphere, the temperature increases from -96 °C to about 0 °C at the 50 km-high upper
boundary. This change is brought about the warming of the ozone layer as it absorbs ultraviolet
radiation.
The temperature decreases again in the mesosphere. At its upper boundary (meso-pause)
the temperature is about -90°C and its lower boundary of the polar lights. In the 200-km-high
thermosphere the few gaseous particles located in the upper thermosphere can reach over 1000°C.
The last layer is the exosphere, at an altitude of about 1000 km. Outside the atmosphere,
the Earth is surrounded by Van Allen belt. Structuring the atmosphere by gaseous electrical charge,
three extra categories emerge. The neutrosphere extends up to 80 km, becoming the ionosphere
and then blending into the protonosphere toward outer space. Structuring the atmosphere based
on composition, we also get the homosphere, where all gaseous components are mixed equally,
and the heterosphere, where the gas mizture separates because of the diminishing attraction from
the Earth.
(Adapted from: National Geographic, The Science Book)
After you read the text, answer the following questions.
a. What does the text tell you about? Explain the text content based on the illustration given in
less than 5 sentences.
b. Based on the words in bold; thick, decreases, and upper. Find their antonym in the text.