Famous Mathematician - Srinivasa Ramanujan

  Name           :  Srinivasa Ramanujan - A Famous Mathematician

 

 

 

 

Country        :  India

Period           :  Born :  22nd December 1887                    

                      :  Died  :  26th April 1920

Age               :  32  years

Mother         : Mrs.Komalathammal

Father          :  Mr. K.Srinivasa Iyengar

Spouse         :  Mrs. Janakiammal

 

   

Once of the favourite pastimes of Sri Ramanujan was the construction of magic squares, Playing with numbers.  This one is built round his date of birth, December 22, 1887.  Added any way, vertically, horizontally or diagonally, the numbers add up to 139.  

  

 

Ramanujan was born on 22 December 1887 in Tamil Nadu at the residence of his maternal grandparents  His father, K. Srinivasa Iyengar, worked as a clerk in a sari shop and hailed from the district of Thanjavur.   His mother, Komalatammal, was a housewife and also sang at a local temple.

  

 

 

Knowledge is like the Ocean, says the Indian Tradition: limitless, it knows no boundaries.  

 

 

Mathematics: 

By the time he was about fourteen, his interest in mathematics was unmistakable.  He could solve problems in Trigonometry which some college students in the neighbourhood were struggling with.  And, with the help of those contacts, Ramanujan gained access to a book that was to shape his destiny; this was G.S. Carr's Synopsis of Pure Mathematics.

 

The Indian mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan was born on 22 December 1887 and died on 26 April 1920. It was in recognition of his contribution to mathematics the Government of India decided to celebrate Ramanujan's birthday as the National Mathematics Day every year and to celebrate 2012 as the National Mathematical Year.

In December 2011, as part of the celebrations of the 125th anniversary of Ramanujan's birth, TIFR republished the notebooks in a colored two-volume collector's edition. These were produced from scanned and microfilmed images of the original manuscripts by expert archivists of Roja Muthiah Research Library, Chennai.

 

 

In the midst of his worst sickness, Ramanujan never lost his alertness.  When he was in the nursing home at Putney, London, Mr.Hardy came to visit him.  To humour the patient, Hardy said, "I came by taxi, no. 1729.  What do you find in it?"  

Ramanujan smiled and said, "It is a beautiful number: it is the smallest number, that can be expressed as the sum of two cubes in two different ways." 

1729 = 10³ + 9³ 

1729 = 12³ + 1³   

 

It is generally believed that Mr. Hardy chose Ramanujan and supported him.  But, in characteristic detachment, Hardy says " I owe more to Ramanujan than to anyone else" and in a reminiscent article he added, "It is obvious that my association with Ramanujan and Littlewood was the decisive event of my life.  In a personal rating of mathematicians on the basis of pure talent, Hardy gave himself a score of 25, Littlewood 30, Hilbert 80 and Ramanujan 100.  Theirs was the noblest instance of Indo-British collaboration.

Ramanujan was best known for his greatest theories and methodologies:Landau-Ramanujan Constant 

• Mock theta functions 

• Ramanujan conjecture 

• Ramanujan Prime 

• Ramanujan-Soldner Constant 

• Ramanujan theta function 

• Ramanujan's sum 

• Rogers-Ramanujan identities 

• Ramanujan's master theorem 

Note Books: 

Notebooks 1, 2 and 3 were published as a two-volume set in 1957 by the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, India. This was a photocopy edition of the original manuscripts, in his own handwriting.  

 

                       

Ramanujan returned to Kumbakonam, Madras Presidency in 1919 and died soon thereafter at the age of 32 in 1920. His widow, S. Janaki Ammal, moved to Mumbai, but returned to Chennai (formerly Madras) in 1950, where she lived until her death at age 94 in 1994.   "Ramanujan's brief life and death are symbolic of conditions in India.  Of our millions how few get any education at all, how many live on the verge of starvation; of even those who get some education how many have nothing to look forward to but a clerkship in some office...  If life opened its gates to them and offered them food and healthy conditions of living and education and opportunities of growth, how many among these millions would be eminent scientists, technicians, industrialists, writers and artists, helping to build a new India and a new world?"                                                              

    -- Sri Jawaharlal Nehru                                                                                             

        Indian first Prime Minister and Freedom fighter.