Srinivasa Ramanujan

One of the most romantic and inspiring story in the history of mathematics:

• Srinivasa Ramanujan was born on December 22, 1887 in the town of Erode, located in Tamil Nadu.
• In 1904 Ramanujan left high school, his future looked promising and he had won the school’s mathematics prize and, more importantly, a scholarship allowing him to study at the Government Arts College in the town of Kumbakonam.
• At the beginning of 1907, at the age of 19, with minimal funds and a stomach all too often groaning with hunger, Ramanujan continued on the path he had chosen: total devotion to mathematics
• He is recognised as one of the greatest mathematicians of his time, but Srinivasa Ramanujan had almost no formal training in math.
• His mathematical knowledge developed, from main source of inspiration and expertise became "Synopsis of elementary results in pure mathematics" by George S. Carr.
• Also, he could afford only a small amount of paper, doing most of his work on slate with chalk, transferring a minimal amount of his working and his results to paper.
• At about the time Ramanujan entered college, he began to record his mathematical discoveries in notebooks.
• Ramanujan devoted all of his efforts to mathematics and continued to record his discoveries without proofs in notebooks for the next six years.
• He compiled 3,900 results (mostly identities and equations), before he lost his life at the age of 32. His infinite series for pi was one of his most celebrated findings.
• In 1919 he returned to Kumbakonam, Madras Presidency, and soon thereafter, in 1920, died at the age of 32.
• He was the second Indian to be inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society, which is a Fellowship of some of the world’s most eminent scientists.
• One of the notebooks, known as the ‘lost notebook’, was discovered in the Trinity College library by mathematician George Andrews in 1976, and was later published as a book.
• In 1997 "The Ramanujan Journal" was launched to publish work in areas of mathematics influenced by Ramanujan.

"An equation means nothing to me unless it expresses a thought of God."

"I had never seen anything in the least like them before. A single look at them is enough to show that they could only be written by a mathematician of the highest class. They must be true because, if they were not true, no one would have the imagination to invent them."

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