About
An Indian mathematician with least resource and great intelligence who lived on earth for very short period of time. Ramanujan was born on 22 Dec, 1887 in Tamil Brahmin Iyengar family, in Erode. He grew up in very religious thoughts, beliefs, but despite that passion towards mathematics was flourished since childhoods days. He was the prodigy, he was able to understand and solve mathematics well above his age. At age of 16 he got his mind at A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics, a collection of 5000+ theorems, which lead him to develop Bernoulli Numbers independently. From then he did mathematics of his own, and independently rediscovers many known mathematics facts. Some of which he sent to GH Hardy, for which Hardy was impressed and his professional mathematician career started.
Letters to European Mathematician
With the ultimate passion and extraordinary work, he increase prominence among Indian mathematician, which indeed help him presenting his work to European mathematicians at M. J. M. Hill of University College London. He got very aggressive comments mentioning lack of clarity and work not been complete according to European Standards, but they indeed gave serious professional advice, and with help he drafted the letters to sent leading Cambridge mathematicians.
H. F. Baker and E. W. Hobson gave no response over the letters. But he got response from G. H. Hardy, Hardy was amazed over few of Ramanujan result sent, and claim made approximation over prime counting function. Which lead to discussion between him and Hardy and Hardy was greatly impressed and offered to come to Cambridge to have professional among many mathematics genius. After a while he accepted a offer and went Cambridge and stayed for next 5 years.
Mathematical Achievements
1. Partitions of Number
The above formula was first obtained by G. H. Hardy and Ramanujan and which gave very approx. for p(1000) with 1.41 % of error.
The graph shows approx in blue and actual in orange for first 15 values.
—
2. Fast Converging Pi series
The above series very fast converging pi series. First term gives 3.1415927… approximate to 7 decimal places. This was remarkable work and inspire many to discover many such series.
This are only few of work mention of Ramanujan, there is plenty more to state.
Taxi Cab Number
In a famous anecdote, Hardy took a cab to go to Ramanujan. When he got there, he told Ramanujan that the cab’s number, 1729, was “rather a dull one.” On which Ramanujan replied,
I remember once going to see him when he was ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavorable omen. “No”, he replied, “it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways
Belief and Spirituality
He had strong beliefs in God, on contrary to Hardy had no beliefs in God. But there was strong bond of mathematics between them.
According to Ramanujan, “An equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God”. Which explains why he credited every bit of mathematics he did to his family goddess, Namagiri Thayar (Goddess Mahalakshmi) of Namakkal. Hardy remarks for Ramanujan all beliefs and religion seemed equally true. Ramanujan consider religion or belief as more personal thing than a community one.
Death
(26 April, 1920)
Ramanujan died at very young age of 32, due to tuberculosis. Many speculate that he might have lived longer if he would have stayed in Europe. Due to lack of health facilities in India, the disease came back, and hit him to death.
Ramanujan lived very short life, but achieved more than any normal person can do in entire 100 years of life. He perceived and practiced mathematics according to European standards for only 5 years. But is and will remembered for generation to come and inspire every child who like mathematics and lacked resources to flourish. Due to legacy made by him by his extraordinary work in mathematics, 22 Dec is celebrated as National Mathematics Day of India.
