Srinivasa Ramanujan Mathematician Biography
Srinivasa Ramanujan, an Indian mathematician, was born in Erode, India, on December 22, 1887, and passed away in Kumbakonam on April 26, 1920. Among his many contributions to the theory of numbers are his groundbreaking findings regarding the partition function’s properties.
He acquired a copy of George Shoobridge Carr’s Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics, 2 vol. (1880–86) when he was fifteen years old. His creativity was awakened by this collection of thousands of theorems, many of which were accompanied by the briefest of proofs and contained no material published after 1860. After confirming the findings in Carr’s book, Ramanujan developed his theorems and theories. He won a scholarship at the University of Madras in 1903, but he lost it the next year for focusing only on mathematics instead of his other coursework.
Ramanujan carried on with his work despite being unemployed and leading the most impoverished life. He started looking for a job permanently after getting married in 1909, and this led him to an interview with Ramachandra Rao, a government officer. Rao initially funded Ramanujan’s studies because he was impressed by his mathematical skill, but Ramanujan declined to live on charity and instead secured a position as a clerk with the Madras Port Trust.
The first of Ramanujan’s works appeared in the Indian Mathematical Society Journal in 1911. As word of his brilliance spread, he started writing to the British mathematician Godfrey H. Hardy in 1913, which resulted in a grant from Trinity College, Cambridge, and a special fellowship from the University of Madras. When Ramanujan overcame his religious reservations and went to England in 1914, Hardy helped him with his studies and served as a tutor.
It was astonishing how much Ramanujan knew about mathematics—the majority of which he had figured out on his own. He knew essentially little about the advances in mathematics that had occurred recently, yet he was the greatest continuing fractions expert alive. He solved the functional equations of the zeta function, the Riemann series, the elliptic integrals, the hypergeometric series, and his theory of divergent series. In the latter, he developed a method that became known as Ramanujan summation to determine the value of the sum of these series.
However, he was ignorant of Cauchy’s theorem, doubly periodic functions, and the classical theory of quadratic forms. He also had a vague notion of what constituted a mathematical proof. Despite his brilliance, a lot of his prime number theory theorems were incorrect.
When it came to the partition of numbers—the number of ways a positive integer may be stated as the sum of other positive integers—Ramanujan made significant progress in England. For example, 4 can be expressed as 4 + 1, 2 + 2, 2 + 1 + 1, and 1 + 1 + 1 + 1. In 1918, he was elected to the Royal Society of London, and his articles were published in publications throughout Europe and England. Ramanujan had developed tuberculosis in 1917, but by 1919 his health had sufficiently recovered for him to return to India.
He passed away the next year, mostly unrecognized by the general public but regarded by mathematicians as a singular talent on par with Leonhard Euler (1707–83) and Carl Jacobi (1804–51). In addition to three notebooks, Ramanujan left behind a sheaf of sheets known as the “lost notebook” that contained numerous unpublished conclusions that mathematicians were still able to confirm years after his passing.
Spiritual Life and Personality
According to Hardy, Ramanujan said that he believed all religions to be equally true. Hardy went on to say that Indian biographers had exaggerated Ramanujan’s religious belief, while Westerners have romanticized it, referring only to his belief rather than his practice. He also commented on Ramanujan’s rigorous vegetarianism at the same time.
Berndt also stated, “Many people falsely promulgate mystical powers to Ramanujan’s mathematical thinking,” in an interview with Frontline. It’s untrue. It is further speculated that Ramanujan worked out intermediate results on slate since he could not afford the paper to record the results more permanently. “He has meticulously recorded every result in his three notebooks,” the author said.
Who Is Srinivasa Ramanujan?
Born as Srinivasa Ramanujan Aiyangar (Tamil: [sriːniʋa̞sa ɇa̐ma\nud̡őan ajːaŋgar], Srinivasa Ramanujan FRS (/ˈsri̐n̪vɑ̧sə rɑ\ˈmɑ\nŊdŒən/ SREE-nih-vah-sə rah-MAH-nuuj-ən; was a mathematician from India. Despite having very little formal experience in pure mathematics, he made significant contributions to number theory, mathematical analysis, infinite series, and continuing fractions. He also solved some of the then-unsolvable mathematical puzzles.
In the beginning, Ramanujan conducted independent research on mathematics. Hans Eysenck claims that “he attempted, but mostly failed, to pique the interest of the top professional mathematicians in his work. Because what he had to offer them was too new, too strange, and presented oddly, they were uninterested. He started a mail communication with the English mathematician G. H. Hardy at the University of Cambridge, England, in 1913, looking for mathematicians who could better understand his work.
Seeing the amazing quality of Ramanujan’s work, Hardy made arrangements for him to visit Cambridge. Hardy noted in his notes that Ramanujan had generated numerous revolutionary new theorems, some of which “defeated me completely; I had never seen anything in the least like them before” and some very advanced findings that had just been verified.
Ramanujan independently compiled around 3,900 results (mainly identities and equations) throughout his brief life. Many of them were wholly original; his unique and extremely unusual discoveries, like the Ramanujan prime, the Ramanujan theta function, partition formulae, and mock theta functions, have opened up whole new fields of study and greatly stimulated additional research. All but a dozen or two of his hundreds of results have since been shown to be accurate.
Since Ramanujan’s death, decades have passed since his notebooks containing summaries of his published and unpublished results have been analyzed and studied as a source of new mathematical ideas. The Ramanujan Journal is a scientific journal that was founded to publish work in all areas of mathematics influenced by Ramanujan.
Even in 2012, scholars were finding that his remarks regarding “simple properties” and “similar outputs” for specific finds were significant and subtle results of number theory that had gone unnoticed for almost a century. He was elected as the first Indian fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and one of the youngest fellows of the Royal Society. He was also only the second member of Indian descent. Hardy compared Ramanujan to mathematical prodigies like Euler and Jacobi, saying that just one glance at his original letters might have demonstrated that they could only have been written by a mathematician of the highest caliber.
Ramanujan had to return to India in 1919 due to health issues, which are now thought to have been caused by hepatic amoebiasis, a complication from episodes of dysentery many years earlier. He passed away in India in 1920 at the age of 32. Written in January 1920, his final correspondence with Hardy demonstrates that he was still coming up with fresh theorems and concepts in mathematics. When his “lost notebook” containing discoveries from his final year of life was found in 1976, mathematicians were quite excited.
Why did Srinivasa Ramanujan die?
Mathematicians throughout the world find inspiration in Srinivasa Iyengar Ramanujan. Considered India’s greatest mathematician, the self-taught prodigy led a brief but active life. On April 26, 1920, Ramanujan passed away at the age of thirty-two due to disease.
What was Srinivasa Ramanujan famous for?
One of the greatest mathematicians in history is Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920), a man whose contributions to a variety of mathematical fields, such as mathematical analysis, infinite series, continued fractions, number theory, and game theory, completely changed twentieth-century mathematics.
How old was Ramanujan when he died?
He went back to Kumbakonam, Madras Presidency, in 1919, and passed away at the age of 32 in 1920. Compiling Ramanujan’s handwritten notes, which included continuous fractions, single moduli, and hypergeometric series, was his brother Tirunarayanan’s task after his death.
Did Ramanujan have children?
Janaki Ammal was the name of Srinivasa Ramanujan’s spouse. In 1909, Ramanujan was 22 years old and Janaki was 9 years old when they got married. They did not, however, move in together until Janaki was of legal age. Their first kid was a son called S.
What were Ramanujan’s last words?
“I sincerely apologize for not having written you a single letter until today. Recently, I came across some intriguing functions that I refer to as “Mock” ϑ-functions. They enter mathematics just as beautifully as the regular theta functions, in contrast to the “False” ϑ-functions (which Rogers explored in part).
What was Ramanujan suffering from?
Dr P. Chandrasekhar of Madras Medical College, who served as Ramanujan’s attending physician from September 1919 till his death on April 26, 1920, established a permanent diagnosis of tuberculosis.
Why does Ramanujan fear infinity?
Despite his extraordinary mathematical abilities, Ramanujan was well-recognized for his fear of infinity. Because he believed infinity to be an impossible and incomprehensible idea, he was scared.
What happened to Ramanujan’s wife?
After Ramanujan left for England, Janaki Ammal remained in India and carried on her family’s home. Janaki Ammal passed away in 1994 at the age of 95, and Ramanujan and her did not have any children together.
