Srinivasa Ramanujan Biography

Srinivasa Ramanujan was a brilliant mathematician, who made significant advances to the subject, particularly in number theory. His study continues to be researched and inspires mathematicians to this day. In this article, we will explore Ramanujan Biography, one of India's greatest mathematical geniuses. He worked on elliptic functions, continued fractions, and infinite series, and made significant contributions to the analytical theory of numbers. Ramanujan had very little formal mathematics instruction, and he did not know many fields of mathematics. However, in areas where he was comfortable and enjoyed working, his output of new results was spectacular.

He died of illness on April 26, 1920. Ramanujan's age at the time was just 32. Even on his deathbed, he was involved in Mathematics, writing down a set of theorems that he said he had learned in a dream. These and many of Ramanujan's earlier theorems are so complicated that the entire extent of his legacy has yet to be exposed, and his work continues to be the subject of significant mathematical research. Cambridge University Press released his collected articles in 1927.

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Ramanujan Birth Place

Srinivasa Ramanujan born in Erode, a small village some 400 kilometres southwest of Madras, in his grandmother's house (now Chennai). Ramanujan's mother took him to Kumbakonam, roughly 160 kilometres from Madras when he was a year old. His father worked as a clerk in a cloth merchant's shop in Kumbakonam.

Srinivasa Ramanujan Education

Ramanujan was the top student in his district when he started high school at Kumbakonam Town High School at the age of ten. He rapidly discovered his vocation while browsing the mathematical books in his school's library. He began intensive self-study of mathematics at the age of 12, working through cubic equations as well as arithmetic and geometric series. Ramanujan began studying hundreds of theorems in an out-of-date book called A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics when he was 15 years old. He then went on to formulate many of his own. His academic performance was such that he was awarded a scholarship to the Government College in Kumbakonam at the end of high school.

Ramanujan's greatest asset, however, turned out to be his Achilles heel. His scholarship to both the Government College and then the University of Madras was revoked since his obsession with math forced him to neglect his other subjects. With few possibilities, he applied for government unemployment benefits in 1909.

Despite these failures, Ramanujan persisted in his mathematical pursuits, publishing a 17-page paper on Bernoulli numbers in the Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society in 1911. In 1912, Ramanujan was able to get a low-level job as a shipping clerk with the Madras Port Trust, where he was able to make a living while establishing a reputation as a bright mathematician, thanks to the aid of members of the community.

Around this time, Ramanujan became aware of the work of G. H. Hardy, a British mathematician who had been a young genius himself, with whom he began a correspondence in 1913 and shared some of his work. Hardy became convinced of Ramanujan's intelligence after originally dismissing his letters as a hoax, and was able to obtain him a research scholarship at the University of Madras as well as a Cambridge grant.

Hardy persuaded Ramanujan to join him at Cambridge the next year. Hardy provided the formal structure in which Ramanujan's intuitive command of numbers could flourish over their ensuing five-year mentorship, with Ramanujan authoring upwards of 20 publications on his own and more in collaboration with Hardy. In 1916, Ramanujan received a bachelor of science degree in research from Cambridge, and in 1918, he was elected to the Royal Society of London.

Personal Details

Ramanujan married S. Janaki Ammal, who was only ten years old at the time, in July 1909. Ramanujan's mother had orchestrated the marriage. In 1912, the couple moved in together. Ramanujan's wife moved in with Ramanujan's parents when he departed to study at the University of Cambridge. Ramanujan's scholarship covered both his expenses in Cambridge and his family's expenses in Kumbakonam. 

He was diagnosed with TB and dangerously low vitamin levels in 1917. He was in and out of sanitariums and nursing homes for months. His health appeared to have improved enough for him to return to India in February 1919, but he only lasted for another year. Srinivasa Ramanujan died on April 26, 1920, in Madras, at the age of 32. Hepatic amoebiasis, caused by liver parasites common in Madras, was most likely the cause of his death. His remains were cremated. Unfortunately, some of his Brahmin family declined to attend his funeral because Ramanujan had migrated overseas.

The Man Who Knew Infinity

Ramanujan left behind a number of unpublished papers containing theorems that mathematicians have continued to research. Between 1918 and 1951, G N Watson, Mason Professor of Pure Mathematics at Birmingham, wrote 14 publications under the general title Theorems asserted by Ramanujan, and approximately 30 works inspired by Ramanujan's work. Hardy gave Watson a huge quantity of Ramanujan writings, some written before 1914 and others written during Ramanujan's final year in India before his death.

Berndt reveals that Ramanujan published 37 publications in total "Three notebooks and a 'lost' notebook contained a huge portion of his work. Approximately 4,000 claims are contained in these notebooks, all of which are without proof. The majority of his statements have now been proven, and his published work continues to inspire modern mathematicians." The Man Who Knew Infinity, a biography of Ramanujan, was published in 1991, and a film based on it, starring Dev Patel as Ramanujan and Jeremy Irons as Hardy, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2015.

International Recognition

Ramanujan gained international acclaim very quickly. In March 1916, Cambridge University gave him a BA degree (later raised to a Ph D) for his work on highly composite numbers, and he was elected a member of the London Mathematical Society in 1917. In 1918, he was awarded a fellow of the Royal Society for his work on elliptic functions and number theory, and he went on to become the first Indian to be elected a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He was hospitalised in 1917 with TB and acute vitamin deficiencies due to the cold environment and paucity of vegetarian food in wartime England.

Facts About Ramanujan

• Ramanujan could work out Loney's Trigonometry problems on his own when he was thirteen. He grew up to be a genius despite having very little exposure to advanced mathematics.

• He never had any friends in school because his classmates couldn't understand him and were always amazed by his mathematical skills.

• Srinivasa Ramanujan Education: He didn't acquire a degree as a young man because he failed his fine arts classes, despite always doing extraordinarily well in mathematics. Srinivasa Ramanujan Biography shows us that failure does not have to be the end of a person's journey in life. This brilliant man is an inspiration to all who believe that a single setback can never determine your fate. Furthermore, never allow minor setbacks to deter you from pursuing your goal.

• Because paper was expensive, Ramanujan often drew his conclusions on a 'slate,' which he used to scribble down the outcomes of his derivations.

• Ramanujam was brought to England by G.H. Hardy, but the English weather did not suit him. He also stated that he was subjected to some racism.

• In India, the 22nd of December is celebrated as National Mathematics Day in honour of Ramanujan's birth anniversary.

• After a humorous event, 1729 is known as the Hardy-Ramanujam number, and such numbers are known as Taxicab numbers. When G.H. Hardy visited him in the hospital, he mentioned that he had taken a taxicab with the number 1729, adding, "What a dull number to ride into the hospital." Ramanujam said quickly "No, it's quite the opposite: it's a fascinating number. It's the smallest integer that can be expressed in two separate ways as the sum of two cubes "

• In January 1920, during his dying days, he wrote one more letter to Hardy, explaining his discovery of mock theta functions, which is regarded as one of his most important contributions. Mathematician Ken Ono of Emory University and his team of academics have now proven he was correct almost a century later.

Conclusion

Ramanujan was a mathematical genius and a child prodigy. Despite having little or no access to advanced mathematics as a child, he turned out to be a genius. The storey of how Srinivasa Ramanujan, a math genius, was found by the world is one of the most fascinating in mathematics history. Ramanujan submitted a ten-page letter to prominent English mathematician G.H. Hardy of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1913, containing 120 theorems (UK). Hardy spent hours debating the letter's legitimacy, trying to figure out whether it was written by a "crazy or a genius." 

Ramanujan was an autodidact who fostered his love for mathematics in utter isolation after being born on December 22, 1887, into an impoverished Hindu Brahmin household in Erode, Tamil Nadu. He first encountered formal mathematics when he was 10 years old when a friend gave him an S.L. Loney trigonometry manual, which he mastered in two years, proving certain important theorems and identities independently. From there, Ramanujan co-wrote more than a half-dozen research articles with Hardy, and published more than 30 publications independently, showing the inspiring life history of Ramanujan.