Srinivasa Ramanujan - The mathematical genius from India who knew infinity (2023)

Fast Facts

• • Name:Srinivasa Ramanujan
  • Famous as:mathematician
  • Known for:Landau-Ramanujan constant, Ramanujan conjecture, Ramanujan prime, Ramanujan-Soldner constant, Ramanujan theta function, Ramanujan sum, Ramanujan law and many more.
  • Birth date:December 22, 1887
  • Died on:April 26, 1920 (age 32)
  • Nationality:Indonesian
  • Place of birth:Eroding, Tamil Nadu
  • Awards:Member of the Royal Society
  • Parents:K. Srinivasa Iyengar und Komalatammal
  • Spouse:Janaki Ammal

Srinivasa Ramanujanwas a great Indian mathematician who lived during British rule. Although he had no formal training in mathematics, he made amazing contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, continued fractions, and also gave solutions to mathematical problems previously considered unsolvable.

Ramanujan was invited to Cambridge, England, where he spent almost 5 years pioneering new theories.

He was the first Indian to be elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He became one of the youngest Fellows of the Royal Society (FRS) and only the second Indian member. Ramanujan independently compiled nearly 3,900 results, most of which were identities and equations.

Letter Bio

Ramanujan was born on December 22, 1887 to a Tamil family in Erode, Madras Presidency, now Tamil Nadu, India. His father, K. Srinivasa Iyengar, was a clerk at a sari shop and his mother, Komalatammal, was a homemaker who often sang at a local temple. They lived in the town of Kumbakonam, which has now been turned into a museum.

Ramanujan faced many difficulties right after his birth. Many of his siblings were victims of infant mortality and did not even complete their first year of life. When he was two years old, Ramanujan contracted smallpox.

His early schooling was marred by a series of family tragedies as he moved to different places. He was influenced by his mother who taught him ancient Indian cultures, traditions and ways of life. Ramanujan became a devout and religious Hindu.

In 1897, when Ramanujan was ten years old, he passed his elementary exams at the Kangayan Elementary School in English, Tamil and arithmetic and was the best in the district. He then enrolled in the city's high middle school.

By the age of 11 he had acquired college-level math and studied S.L. Loney's book on advanced trigonometry.

At the age of 13 he discovered elaborate theorems himself.

At 14 he received certificates of merit and academic awards that lasted until later in his life.

He was interested in geometry and infinite series. In 1902, Ramanujan developed his own method to solve the quartic equations and attempted to solve the quintic, unaware that it could not be solved by radicals.

In 1903, at the age of 16, Ramanujan received a copy ofA summary of elementary results in pure and applied mathematics, by G. S. Carr, which he studied closely.

The next year, 1904, he independently developed and studied the Bernoulli numbers and calculated the Euler-Mascheroni constant to 15 decimal places.

In 1904 he graduated from Town Higher Secondary School and received a scholarship to study at the Government Arts College in Kumbakonam, but he was only interested in mathematics.

He later enrolled at Pachaiyappa's College in Madras. There he passed mathematics, but failed in other subjects. He left college without a Fellow of Arts degree and continued his research in mathematics. He lived in extreme poverty and on the brink of starvation.

In 1909 Ramanujan married Janakiammal. After marriage, Ramanujan developed testicular hydrocele, but his family had no money for the surgery until January 1910, when a doctor volunteered to perform a free operation.

In 1910, when he was 23 years old, he had a chance encounter with V. Ramaswamy Aiyer, the founder of the Indian Mathematical Society. This led to his enrollment as a researcher at the University of Madras.

Later, to make a living, he taught students preparing for their FA exam. After Ramanujan got a research position at Madras University in 1913, he moved to Triplicane with his family.

career as a mathematician

While looking for a job in the finance department, Ramanujan met assistant collector V. Ramaswamy Aiyer, founder of the Indian Mathematical Society, who was impressed with his mathematical work and referred his case to R. Ramachandra Rao, district collector for Nellore and the Secretary of the Indian Mathematical Society.

Rao was equally impressed with his work, but conducted careful research to ensure it was indeed his original work. Rao sent him to Madras with financial support to continue his research.

Ramanujan later had his work published in the Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society. He later wrote another paper and continued to provide issues in the journal.

In 1912 he got a temporary job in the office of the Madras Accountant General, lasting only a few weeks. He then applied for a position with the Chief Accountant of the Madras Port Trust and was appointed bookkeeper. There, Ramanujan continued his mathematical research after completing his official duties.

Contact with British mathematicians

In 1913, Ramanujan's work was sent to British mathematicians M.J.M. University College London mound. He also sent letters to leading mathematicians at Cambridge University, H.F. Baker and E.W. Hobson, and to G.H. Hardy. Hardy was impressed by Ramanujan's work on infinite series. Hardy asked his colleague J.E. Littlewood to take a look at the papers. Littlewood was amazed by Ramanujan's genius.

In February 1913, Hardy Ramanujan wrote a letter expressing his interest in his work and asking him to come to England. However, Ramanujan refused to leave his country according to Brahmanic traditions.

The Mathematics Board of Studies agreed to award Ramanujan a research fellowship for the next two years at the University of Madras. Ramanujan continued to submit articles to the Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society.

crossing to England

On March 17, 1914, at his mother's urging, Ramanujan traveled on the ship S.S. Nevasa to England, leaving his wife in India. He began his work with Littlewood and Hardy.

Ramanujan spent almost five years in Cambridge working with Hardy and Littlewood. He published his findings in the journals.

In 1916, Ramanujan received a Bachelor of Science degree through research, later renamed a PhD. His work on highly composite numbers was published in the Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society.

On December 6, 1917 he was elected to the London Mathematical Society. In 1918 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was the second Indian, after Ardaseer Cursetjee in 1841, to become a Fellow of the FRS, and at 31 the youngest Fellow. This was for his study of elliptic functions and number theory.

On October 13, 1918 he became the first Indian to be elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

illness, return to India and death

Ramanujan's health deteriorated in England between 1914 and 1918. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis and committed to a sanatorium. In 1919 he returned to India and stayed in Kumbakonam, Madras Presidency. He died in 1920 at the age of 32.

After his death, his brother Tirunarayanan drew and compiled Ramanujan's remaining handwritten notes, which consisted of formulas on singular modules, hypergeometric series, and continued fractions. His missing notebook was rediscovered in 1976 and caused a great stir among mathematicians.

Memorable Quotes

"An equation means nothing to me unless it expresses a thought about God."

"No, it's a very interesting number, it's the smallest number that can be expressed in two different ways as the sum of two cubes."
–Srinivasa Ramanujan while responding to G. H. Hardy's suggestion that a taxi number (1729) is a boring number

“During my sleep I had an unusual experience. There was a red screen, so to speak, formed by flowing blood. I watched it. Suddenly a hand started writing on the screen. I got everyone's attention. This hand wrote a series of elliptic integrals. I remember you. As soon as I woke up, I made her write.”

"To maintain my brain, I want food and that's my first consideration now. Any compassionate letter from you will help me get a scholarship here..."

Ramanujan was a dignified, pleasantly mannered man, somewhat shy, and of a quiet nature. He lived a rather spartan life in Cambridge. He was a strictly orthodox Hindu.

He attributed his acumen to his family goddess, Mahalakshmi of Namakkal. According to him, he received visions of scrolls with complex mathematical content unfolding before his eyes.

According to Hardy, all religions seemed equally true to Ramanujan; and he was a strict vegetarian.

The Indian government issued a stamp in 1962, Ramanujan's 75th birthday, commemorating his achievements in the field of number theory; a new design of it was released in 2011.

In 2011, on his 125th birthday, the Government of India declared December 22 every year as the National Mathematics Day and 2012 was celebrated as the National Year of Mathematics. A number of honors were introduced in his memory by many educational institutions.

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