National Mathematics Day 2022: Interesting Facts About Mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan

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Srinivasa Ramanujan (December 22, 1887 - April 26, 1920), was an Indian mathematician who contributed to the Number theory and the partition function features. He was a brilliant mathematician who was self-groomed. Although he was one of the best mathematicians, he remained unknown and unseen even after his death in 1920 at age 32. He was an intuitive genius whose discovery in the field of number theory and infinite series, which helped in calculating the digits of pi in unusual ways. To know interesting facts about him, go through the article below.

1. Srinivasa Ramanujan was born in Erode to a brahmin family on December 22, 1887, at his maternal grandmother's home. His father worked for a clothing merchant while his mother was a housewife.

2. Ramanujan was primarily self-taught and grew up in abject poverty. He developed his passion for mathematics on his own and in complete isolation. He borrowed a copy of Loney's book on Plane Trigonometry from a friend when he was 12 years old. This publication, along with A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics, launched him into the galaxy of twentieth-century mathematics. When Ramanujan was 15 years old, he obtained a copy of George Shoebridge Carr's Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics which inspired him to many mathematical discoveries.

3. Ramanujan was married to a 9-Year-Old Girl Janaki Ammal on March 21, 1899.

4. Ramanujan's Formula was written by Hardy. Ramanujan figured them out using intuition but no one would have the brilliance to create them if they were not true.

5. Ramanujan is the second Indian and one of society's youngest fellows in its history at the age of 31 in 1918. Collaborating with Hardy, Ramanujan wrote more than a half-dozen scholarly articles. He authored more than 30 academic articles during his fellowship stint.

6. Ramanujan worshipped his family's Goddess Mahalakshmi to whom he had ultimate reverence. Most of his math breakthroughs were based on his intuition.

7. Ramanujan verified results in Carr's book and He developed his own theorems and ideas. He lost the scholarship which he had secured in the University of Madras in 1903 but lost it the next year due to his mathematical preoccupations.

8. He published his first paper in the Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society in 1911 which worked as a launch pad for him. He was formally introduced to Hardy through whose help he received a special scholarship from the University of Madras and a grant from Trinity College, Cambridge. He travelled to England in 1914 where he picked up some knowledge from Hardy. Here he made advances in the field of partition of numbers.

9. He compiled around 3900 equations and identities and infinite series for pi which is the basis of the most frequently used algorithms of today. He also pioneered game theory development which included new ideas for solving math problems. He described the mock theta function, Riemann series, the elliptic integrals, hypergeometric series, the functional equations of the zeta function, and his own theory of divergent series.

10. His papers on partition of numbers were published in English and European journals.

11. He was the second Indian to be elected to the Royal Society of England in 1918.

12. 'GH Hardy once went to meet Ramanujan at a hospital. He had taken a taxi numbered '1729' which Ramanujan discussed in detail with Hardy. He said it is the smallest number which is the sum of two different cubes in 2 different ways. Later this came to be known as 'Hardy-Ramanujan Number'.

13. A museum memorialising Ramanujan's images including that of his family members and friends. Messages from and to his friends are also recorded here.

14. He used to give an expression to his thoughts using green ink on a book which was later named as the "Lost Notebook". This was found by George Andrews, a mathematician in the Trinity College library in 1976

15. December 22 is the birth anniversary of Ramanujan which is observed as National Mathematics Day. He was a brilliant example for the human ability to develop thoughts and using maths and symbols as cognitive tools.

16. Ramanujan succumbed to tuberculosis at the age of 32. The legacy he left behind were three notebooks and some pages known as 'lost notebooks' that had certain mathematical information that continued to be verified even after his death.