Srinivasa Ramanujan - The Man Who Knew Infinity - Indian Mathematician

Srinivasa Ramanujan

Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887 December 22nd - 1920 April 26th) was an Indian mathematician, He was born into a Tamil Brahmin Iyengar family in Erode Madras Presidency, Presently located in Tamil Nadu India. He lived during the British rule in India.

Without having any formal training in pure mathematics, he made enormous amount of contributions to Mathematics like Infinite series, Number theory, Mathematical analysis, Continued fractions, his achievements include the Hardy-Ramanujan-Littlewood circle method in number system theory, Roger-Ramanujan's identities in partition of Integers, a long list of the highest composite numbers, the number theory and Algebra of Inequalities.

He also received the Fellowship of the Royal Society on 28 February 1918.Although he was a self-taught mathematician, but he said that my knowledge comes to me by our family Goddesses Namgiri Thayar. He was one of the few mathematicians who walked on the earth, He made enormous amount of contribution to the mathematics, but most of his work is a riddle for us. Due to his Poor health, he left us at the young age of 32 at 1920.

The Man Who Knew Infinity

The Man Who Knew Infinity is a movie about the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan.This biographical movie is based on a book which has the same name "The Man Who Knew Infinity" by Robert kanigel.  If you want to know more about him you should watch this movie.

Here is a story about his childhood

There is a small village in Tanjore district of Tamil Nadu - Erode.  This incident happened in the primary school of that village. Guruji told the children, "Show me the sum of all the numbers from one to hundred in half an hour."  All the children started solving questions.

It was hardly 10 minutes, a 7-year-old boy came and stood in front of Guruji. He was done, Guruji was stunned by his answer. He did the addition perfectly. But the formula that the child used to solve the question was taught in higher classes and only children of higher classes could solve the question with the formula.  Guruji was amazed to see the talent of this young boy who was just 7 year old.

He asked the child, "Son! Where did you learn this formula?"  "Reading from a book."  The child said.

This boy was none other than the great mathematician of India, Srinivasa Ramanujan.  At the age of 7, this same Ramanujan, who showed the miracle of mathematics, failed in class 12th.  He had a keen interest in mathematics.  But in other subjects, his mind seemed to be less.  After failing in 12th, they got married and they started looking for jobs.  With great difficulty, he got a job as a clerk in Madras Transport.  Whenever he got time in office, he used to solve mathematics questions in his seat.  His friends would go for refreshments in the mid-holiday and Ramanujan would get lost in mathematics questions and formulas.

One day his officer saw him. He found that he was writing mathematics formulas.  Several pages came out of his table which were filled with mathematical formulas.

The officer read those sutras and cursed himself and he started thinking, this brilliant young man is not made to sit in the clerk's chair. The officer sent those pages to Professor GS Hardy, the great mathematician of England.

Professor Hardy was stunned by Ramanujan's work.  Ramanujan had given the right answers to the questions that nobody had solved till that time.

Professor Hardy immediately summoned Ramanujan to England, and engaged him in higher mathematics work, later Ramanujan became a world famous mathematician.

National Mathematics Day

In 2012 former Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh had declared Srinivasa Ramanujan's birthday ( December 22 ) as National Mathematics Day.