In 1913, the largely self-taught Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanu

Srinivasa Ramanujan



First glance

The underline begins just after a semi-colon, so one possible path is to check that the second portion is a complete sentence.

Issues

1) Pronoun: they

Answer (B) begins with the pronoun they.

It’s not clear who was brilliant: the British mathematicians or Ramanujan’s theorems? Either one is logically possible. Eliminate choice (B) for pronoun ambiguity.

2) Sentence Structure / Meaning

The remaining choices don’t use the pronoun, so check the structure to make sure you have complete sentences after the semi-colon.

Answer (C) uses a second semi-colon. While it is possible on rare occasions to use more than one semi-colon in a single sentence (e.g., to delineate a list of clauses), it is not appropriate in this case. Further, the structure of the middle “sentence” is faulty, leading to an unclear meaning. Did G.H. Hardy recognize only one theorem? Or was G.H. Hardy the only mathematician to recognize that the theorems were brilliant?

Answer (D) is a sentence fragment. Either only one or G.H. Hardy is a subject, but no main verb exists to go with the subject.

Answer (E) also has a faulty sentence structure leading to ambiguous meaning. First, G.H. Hardy did not merely “recognize” a theorem; rather, he recognized that the theorems were brilliant. In addition, this choice says that the theorems were brilliant thanks to Hardy’s recognition. The theorems are objectively brilliant (or not) on their own; they are not brilliant because Hardy recognized them as such.

Eliminate choices (C), (D), and (E) for faulty sentence structure and unclear or illogical meaning.

The Correct Answer

Correct answer (A) clearly conveys that only one of the three mathematicians recognized the brilliance of Ramanujan’s theorems.