Srinivasa Ramanujan

"Ramanujan" redirects here. For other uses, see Ramanujan (disambiguation).

In this Indian name, the name Srinivasa is a patronymic, and the person should be referred to by the given name, Ramanujan.

Srinivasa Ramanujan
FRS
Ramanujan in 1913
Born
Srinivasa Ramanujan Aiyangar

(1887-12-22)22 December 1887
Erode, Mysore State, British India (now in Tamil Nadu, India)
Died26 April 1920(1920-04-26) (aged 32)
Kumbakonam, Tanjore District, Madras Presidency, British India (now Thanjavur district,
Tamil Nadu, India)
CitizenshipBritish Indian
Education
Known for
AwardsFellow of the Royal Society (1918)
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsUniversity of Cambridge
ThesisHighly Composite Numbers (1916)
Academic advisors
Signature
Srinivasa Ramanujan signature

Srinivasa Ramanujan Aiyangar[a] (22 December 1887 – 26 April 1920) was an Indian mathematician. Often regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, though he had almost no formal training in pure mathematics, he made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions, including solutions to mathematical problems then considered unsolvable.

Ramanujan initially developed his own mathematical research in isolation. According to Hans Eysenck, "he tried to interest the leading professional mathematicians in his work, but failed for the most part. What he had to show them was too novel, too unfamiliar, and additionally presented in unusual ways; they could not be bothered".[4] Seeking mathematicians who could better understand his work, in 1913 he began a mail correspondence with the English mathematician G. H. Hardy at the University of Cambridge, England. Recognising Ramanujan's work as extraordinary, Hardy arranged for him to travel to Cambridge. In his notes, Hardy commented that Ramanujan had produced groundbreaking new theorems, including some that "defeated me completely; I had never seen anything in the least like them before",[5] and some recently proven but highly advanced results.

During his short life, Ramanujan independently compiled nearly 3,900 results (mostly identities and equations).[6] Many were completely novel; his original and highly unconventional results, such as the Ramanujan prime, the Ramanujan theta function, partition formulae and mock theta functions, have opened entire new areas of work and inspired further research.[7] Of his thousands of results, most have been proven correct.[8] The Ramanujan Journal, a scientific journal, was established to publish work in all areas of mathematics influenced by Ramanujan,[9] and his notebooks—containing summaries of his published and unpublished results—have been analysed and studied for decades since his death as a source of new mathematical ideas. As late as 2012, researchers continued to discover that mere comments in his writings about "simple properties" and "similar outputs" for certain findings were themselves profound and subtle number theory results that remained unsuspected until nearly a century after his death.[10][11] He became one of the youngest Fellows of the Royal Society and only the second Indian member, and the first Indian to be elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

In 1919, ill health—now believed to have been hepatic amoebiasis (a complication from episodes of dysentery many years previously)—compelled Ramanujan's return to India, where he died in 1920 at the age of 32. His last letters to Hardy, written in January 1920, show that he was still continuing to produce new mathematical ideas and theorems. His "lost notebook", containing discoveries from the last year of his life, caused great excitement among mathematicians when it was rediscovered in 1976.

  1. ^ Olausson, Lena; Sangster, Catherine (2006). Oxford BBC Guide to Pronunciation. Oxford University Press. p. 322. ISBN 978-0-19-280710-6.
  2. ^ Kanigel, Robert (2004). "Ramanujan, Srinivasa". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/51582. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  3. ^ "Ramanujan Aiyangar, Srinivasa (1887–1920)". trove.nla.gov.au.
  4. ^ Hans Eysenck (1995). Genius, p. 197. Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-48508-8.
  5. ^ Hardy, Godfrey Harold (1940). Ramanujan: Twelve Lectures on Subjects Suggested by His Life and Work. Cambridge University Press. p. 9. ISBN 0-8218-2023-0.
  6. ^ Berndt, Bruce C. (12 December 1997). Ramanujan's Notebooks. Vol. Part 5. Springer Science & Business. p. 4. ISBN 978-0-38794941-3.
  7. ^ Ono, Ken (June–July 2006). "Honoring a Gift from Kumbakonam" (PDF). Notices of the American Mathematical Society. 53 (6): 640–51 [649–50]. Archived (PDF) from the original on 21 June 2007. Retrieved 23 June 2007.
  8. ^ "Rediscovering Ramanujan". Frontline. 16 (17): 650. August 1999. Archived from the original on 25 September 2013. Retrieved 20 December 2012.
  9. ^ Alladi, Krishnaswami; Elliott, P. D. T. A.; Granville, A. (30 September 1998). Analytic and Elementary Number Theory: A Tribute to Mathematical Legend Paul Erdos. Springer Science & Business. p. 6. ISBN 978-0-79238273-7.
  10. ^ Deep meaning in Ramanujan's 'simple' pattern Archived 3 August 2017 at the Wayback Machine
  11. ^ "Mathematical proof reveals magic of Ramanujan's genius" Archived 9 July 2017 at the Wayback Machine. New Scientist.


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