ALSO LISTED IN
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FAMOUS AS
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Mathematician
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NATIONALITY
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BORN ON
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22 December 1887 AD
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BIRTHDAY
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CENTURY
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DIED AT AGE
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32
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SUN SIGN
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BORN IN
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Erode
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DIED ON
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26 April 1920 AD
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PLACE OF DEATH
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Chetput
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PERSONALITY TYPE
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Ambitious, Confident
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GROUPING OF PEOPLE
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Illiterates
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CAUSE OF DEATH
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Illness
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CHARACTER TRAITS
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Intelligent
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FATHER
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K. Srinivasa Iyengar
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MOTHER
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Komalat Ammal
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SIBLINGS
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Sadagopan
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SPOUSE/PARTNER:
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Janaki Ammal
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EDUCATION
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Town Higher
Secondary School
1906 - Government Arts College
Kumbakonam
Pachaiyappa's College
1920 - Trinity College
Cambridge
1919 - University of Cambridge
1916 - University of Cambridge
University of Madras
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Srinivasa
Ramanujan was an Indian mathematician who made significant contributions to
mathematical analysis, number theory, and continued fractions. What made his
achievements really extraordinary was the fact that he received almost no
formal training in pure mathematics and started working on his own mathematical
research in isolation. Born into a humble family in southern India, he began
displaying signs of his brilliance at a young age. He excelled in mathematics
as a school student, and mastered a book on advanced trigonometry written by S.
L. Loney by the time he was 13. While in his mid-teens, he was introduced to
the book ‘A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics’
which played an instrumental role in awakening his mathematical genius. By the
time he was in his late-teens, he had already investigated the Bernoulli
numbers and had calculated the Euler–Mascheroni constant up to 15 decimal
places. He was, however, so consumed by mathematics that he was unable to focus
on any other subject in college and thus could not complete his degree. After
years of struggling, he was able to publish his first paper in the ‘Journal of
the Indian Mathematical Society’ which helped him gain recognition. He moved to
England and began working with the renowned mathematician G. H. Hardy. Their
partnership, though productive, was short-lived as Ramanujan died of an illness
at the age of just 32.
Childhood & Early
Life
· Srinivasa Ramanujan was born on 22 December 1887 in Erode,
Madras Presidency, to K. Srinivasa Iyengar and his wife Komalatammal. His
family was a humble one and his father worked as a clerk in a sari shop. His
mother gave birth to several children after Ramanujan, but none of them
survived infancy.
· Ramanujan contracted smallpox in 1889 but recovered from the
potentially fatal disease. While a young child, he spent considerable time in
his maternal grandparents’ home.
· He started his schooling in 1892. Initially he did not like
school though he soon started excelling in his studies, especially mathematics.
· After passing out of Kangayan Primary School, he enrolled at
Town Higher Secondary School in 1897. He soon discovered a book on advanced
trigonometry written by S. L. Loney which he mastered by the time he was 13. He
proved to be brilliant student and won several merit certificates and academic
awards.
· In 1903, he got his hands on a book called ‘A Synopsis of
Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics’ by G.S. Carr which was a
collection of 5000 theorems. He was thoroughly fascinated by the book and spent
months studying it in detail. This book is credited to have awakened the mathematical
genius in him.
· By the time he was 17, he had independently developed and
investigated the Bernoulli numbers and had calculated the Euler–Mascheroni
constant up to 15 decimal places. He was now no longer interested in any other
subject, and totally immersed himself in the study of mathematics only.
· He graduated from Town Higher Secondary School in 1904 and was
awarded the K. Ranganatha Rao prize for mathematics by the school's headmaster,
Krishnaswami Iyer.
· He went to the Government Arts College, Kumbakonam, on
scholarship. However, he was so preoccupied with mathematics that he could not
focus on any other subject, and failed in most of them. Due to this, his
scholarship was revoked.
· He later enrolled at Pachaiyappa's College in Madras where again
he excelled in mathematics, but performed poorly in other subjects. He failed
to clear his Fellow of Arts exam in December 1906 and again a year later. Then
he left college without a degree and continued to pursue independent research
in mathematics.
Later Years
· After dropping out of college, he struggled to make a living and
lived in poverty for a while. He also suffered from poor health and had to
undergo a surgery in 1910. After recuperating, he continued his search for a job.
· He tutored some college students while desperately searching for
a clerical position in Madras. Finally he had a meeting with deputy collector
V. Ramaswamy Aiyer, who had recently founded the Indian Mathematical Society.
Impressed by the young man’s works, Aiyer sent him with letters of introduction
to R. Ramachandra Rao, the district collector for Nellore and the secretary of
the Indian Mathematical Society.
· Rao, though initially skeptical of the young man’s abilities
soon changed his mind after Ramanujan discussed elliptic integrals,
hypergeometric series, and his theory of divergent series with him. Rao agreed
to help him get a job and also promised to financially fund his research.
· Ramanujan got a clerical post with the Madras Port Trust, and
continued his research with the financial help from Rao. His first paper, a
17-page work on Bernoulli numbers, was published with the help of Ramaswamy
Aiyer, in the ‘Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society’ in 1911.
· The publication of his paper helped him gain attention for his
works, and soon he was popular among the mathematical fraternity in India.
Wishing to further explore research in mathematics, Ramanujan began a
correspondence with the acclaimed English mathematician, Godfrey H. Hardy, in
1913.
· Hardy was very impressed with Ramanujan’s works and helped him
get a special scholarship from the University of Madras and a grant from
Trinity College, Cambridge. Thus Ramanujan travelled to England in 1914 and
worked alongside Hardy who mentored and collaborated with the young Indian.
· In spite of having almost no formal training in mathematics,
Ramanujan’s knowledge of mathematics was astonishing. Even though he had no
knowledge of the modern developments in the subject, he effortlessly worked out
the Riemann series, the elliptic integrals, hypergeometric series, and the
functional equations of the zeta function.
· However, his lack of formal training also meant that he had no
knowledge of doubly periodic functions, the classical theory of quadratic
forms, or Cauchy’s theorem. Also, several of his theorems on the theory of
prime numbers were wrong.
· In England, he finally got the opportunity to interact with
other gifted mathematicians like his mentor, Hardy, and made several further
advances, especially in the partition of numbers. His papers were published in
European journals, and he was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree by research
in March 1916 for his work on highly composite numbers. His brilliant career
was however cut short by his untimely death.
Major Works
· Considered to be a mathematical genius, Srinivasa Ramanujan, was
regarded at par with the likes of Leonhard Euler and Carl Jacobi. Along with
Hardy, he studied the partition function P(n) extensively and gave a
non-convergent asymptotic series that permits exact computation of the number
of partitions of an integer. Their work led to the development of a new method
for finding asymptotic formulae, called the circle method.
Awards &
Achievements
· He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1918, as one of
the youngest Fellows in the history of the Royal Society. He was elected
"for his investigation in Elliptic functions and the Theory of
Numbers."
· The same year, he was also elected a Fellow of Trinity
College—the first Indian to be so honored.
Personal Life &
Legacy
· He was married to a ten-year-old girl named Janakiammal in July
1909 when he was in his early 20s. The marriage was arranged by his mother. The
couple did not have any children, and it is possible that the marriage was
never consummated.
· Ramanujan suffered from various health problems throughout his
life. His health declined considerably while he was living in England as the
climatic conditions did not suit him. Also, he was a vegetarian who found it
extremely difficult to obtain nutritious vegetarian food in England.
· He was diagnosed with tuberculosis and a severe vitamin
deficiency during the late 1910s and returned home to Madras in 1919. He never
fully recovered and breathed his last on 26 April 1920, aged just 32.
· His birthday, 22 December, is celebrated as 'State IT Day' in
his home state of Tamil Nadu. On the 125th anniversary of his birth, India
declared his birthday as 'National Mathematics Day.'
Top 10 Facts You Did
Not Know About Ramanujan
· Ramanujan was a lonely child in school as his peers could never
understand him.
· He hailed from a poor family and used a slate instead of paper
to jot down the results of his derivations.
· He did not receive any formal training in pure mathematics!
· He lost his scholarship to study at Government Arts College as
he was so obsessed with mathematics that he failed to clear other subjects.
· Ramanujan did not possess a college degree.
· He wrote to several prominent mathematicians, but most of them
did not even respond as they dismissed him as a crank due to the lack of
sophistication in his works.
· He became a victim of racism in England.
· The number 1729 is called Hardy-Ramanujan number in his honor
following an incident regarding a taxi with this number.
· A biographical film in Tamil based on Ramanujan’s life was
released in 2014.
· Google honored him on his 125th birth anniversary by replacing
its logo with a doodle on its home page.
Refer from wikipedia
