Scribd
Upload
193 views2 pages

Srinivasa Ramanujan: Indian Math Genius

Srinivasa Ramanujan was an Indian mathematician who made significant contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions. He developed his own theorems and ideas largely through self-study. In 1913, he began collaborating with the British mathematician G.H. Hardy and traveled to England in 1914. There, he advanced mathematics further, especially in the partition of numbers, and was elected fellow of the Cambridge Philosophical Society and Royal Society of London. Ramanujan died in 1920 at the young age of 32, but is recognized as a mathematical genius.

Uploaded by

koppik
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
193 views2 pages

Srinivasa Ramanujan: Indian Math Genius

Srinivasa Ramanujan was an Indian mathematician who made significant contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions. He developed his own theorems and ideas largely through self-study. In 1913, he began collaborating with the British mathematician G.H. Hardy and traveled to England in 1914. There, he advanced mathematics further, especially in the partition of numbers, and was elected fellow of the Cambridge Philosophical Society and Royal Society of London. Ramanujan died in 1920 at the young age of 32, but is recognized as a mathematical genius.

Uploaded by

koppik
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

SRINIVASA RAMANUJAN

(born December 22, 1887, Erode, Indiadied April 26, 1920, Kumbakonam)
Srinivasa Ramanujan was one of Indias mathematical geniuses. He made
wonderful contributions to the field of advanced mathematics including the theory of
numbers and other pioneering discoveries of the properties of the partition function.

Ramanujan was born in Erode, a small village near Chennai in Tamil Nadu. When he was 15
years old, he obtained a copy of George Shoobridge Carrs Synopsis of Elementary Results in
Pure and Applied Mathematics. This collection of some 6,000 theorems aroused his genius.
Having verified the results in Carrs book, Ramanujan went beyond it, developing his own
theorems and ideas. In 1903 he secured a scholarship to the University of Madras but lost it the
following year because he neglected all other studies in pursuit of mathematics.

Ramanujans knowledge of mathematics (most of which he had worked out for himself) was
startling. Although he was almost completely unaware of modern developments in mathematics,
his mastery of continued fractions was unequaled by any living mathematician. He worked out
the Riemann series, the elliptic integrals, hypergeometric series, the functional equations of the
zeta function, and his own theory of divergent series. On the other hand, he knew nothing of
doubly periodic functions, the classical theory of quadratic forms, or Cauchys theorem, and he
had only the most nebulous idea of what constitutes a mathematical proof.

In 1911 Ramanujan published the first of his papers in the Journal of the Indian Mathematical
Society. His genius slowly gained recognition, and in 1913 he began a correspondence with the
British mathematician Godfrey H. Hardy that led to a special scholarship from the University of
Madras and a grant from Trinity College, Cambridge. Overcoming his religious objections,
Ramanujan traveled to England in 1914, where Hardy tutored him and collaborated with him in
some research.

In England, Ramanujan made further advances, especially in the partition of numbers. His
papers were published in English and European journals. In 1918, he was elected as fellow of
the Cambridge Philosophical Society and to the Royal Society of London.

In 1917 Ramanujan had contracted tuberculosis, but his condition improved sufficiently for him
to return to India in 1919. He died the following year, generally unknown to the world at large but
recognized by mathematicians as a phenomenal genius, without peer since Leonhard
Euler (170783) and Carl Jacobi (180451).

You might also like