Schoolboy genius Shourrya Ray cracks 350 yr old Newton puzzle

On a Saturday evening [26^th May 2012] browsing www.dailymail.co.uk  made me read about a new place and of a wonder kid.  Have never heard of or was interested to know of Dresden –  it is the Capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border.

Away, there was a boy who  was more interested in making mechanical  devices than in studying. He made a windmill which could grind wheat and corn, and he made a water clock and a sundial. His teachers thought of him as a poor student. He wanted to go to college, but he didn't have the money to go. He enrolled at the lowest entry. In this position he had to serve the other students by running errands for them. He even ate the leftovers of their meals, but he would do anything to get an opportunity to learn. Even when he was in college, he was not outstanding and received no awards.  When the university shut down because of the plague, he went home and continued to study on his own. He had a notebook with 140 blank pages and he began to fill them with notes as he read and experimented.  His childlike curiosity led him to make some very important discoveries when he became a man. Within a period of a year and half he made three great discoveries.

With this lengthy introductory passage, it may not be easy to identify that genius but a single word would do – yes the word “Apple”.  Often it is quoted that one day when he was drinking tea in the garden, he saw an apple fall to the ground. He started thinking about why it fell, and finally concluded that the same force which caused the apple to fall also kept the moon in orbit around the earth. This same force, gravity, * also kept the planets in orbit around the sun.

That is - Sir Isaac Newton [1642 – 1727] an eminent  physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived. His monograph Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, published in 1687, lays the foundations for most of classical mechanics. In this work, Newton described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries. The Principia is generally considered to be one of the most important scientific books ever written, due, independently, to the specific physical laws the work successfully described, and for the style of the work, which assisted in setting standards for scientific publication down to the present time.

But for nearly 350 years after his findings, Scientists have confounded and were not able to calculate the flight path of a ball and also could not predict how it will hit and bounce off a wall.   Previously it had only been possible to estimate this using a computer, wrote the paper.  Now a 16 year old genius has cracked the puzzle and [in our nature of finding something related to us – he has an Indian connection]

Dailymail and many other papers now have the news of the genius school boy from Dresden, Germany.  He is only 16 and has  managed to crack puzzles which have baffled the world of Maths for more than 350 years.  His name is Shouryya Ray  and he is  hailed a genius after working out the problems set by Sir Isaac Newton.   He has  solved two fundamental particle dynamics theories which physicists have previously been able to calculate only by using powerful computers. 

Ray reportedly first came across the old problem when his secondary school, which specializes in science, set all their year-11 pupils a research project.  On a visit to the Technical University in Dresden pupils received raw data to evaluate a direct numerical simulation – which can be used to describe the trajectory of a ball when it is thrown.  When he realised the current method could not get an exact result, Ray decided to have a go at solving it. He puts the whole thing down to “schoolboy naivety” - he just refused to accept there was no answer to the problem.   “I asked myself: why can’t it work?” he told the paper.

Ray has been fascinated by what he calls the “intrinsic beauty“ of maths since an early age, according to the report. The boy was inspired by his engineer father who began setting him arithmetic problems at the age of six.   He could  crack the puzzle and his solutions mean that scientists can now calculate the flight path of a thrown ball and then predict how it will hit and bounce off a wall.

Though he reported to have begun  solving complicated equations as a six year old but says he's no genius – and that itself perhaps is a hallmark of a genius.   Daily mail reports that when  he was young, his father, an engineer, began testing his brain by setting him arithmetic problems.  After arriving from Calcutta four years ago without knowing any German, Shouryya is now fluent in the language.   His intelligence was quickly noted in class and he was pushed up two years in school - he is currently sitting his exams early.  Modestly Shouryya has pointed out he was weak points as a mathematician, and says he is not as competent in sport.

You can read the full story at :  Genius Shourrya Ray

With regards – S. Sampathkumar.