The Great
Mathematician
Srinivas
Ramanujan
Dhriti Gupta
Naman V
Sahasra Shetty
Sunay C
Who Was Srinivas
Ramanujan
Srinivas Ramanujan was one of the word’s
great mathematicians. Despite starting out
as relatively unknown Indian clerk ,he
burst into the world of mathematics like a
thunderstorm ,changing the future of math
and securing his place in history before
dying suddenly of tuberculosis at the
young age of [Link] though
Ramanujan’s life was short, his This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA
contribution to mathematics is extensive
Early Life Of Srinivas Ramanujan
When Srinivas Ramanujan was 15 years old, he obtained a copy of George Shoobridge Carr’s
Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics, 2 vol. (1880–86). This
collection of thousands of theorems, many presented with only the briefest of proofs and with
no material newer than 1860, aroused his genius. Having verified the results in Carr’s 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 mathematic Ramanujan continued his work, without employment and
living in the poorest circumstances. After marrying in 1909 he began a search for permanent
employment that culminated in an interview with a government official, Ramachandra Rao.
About Srinivas Rmanujan ’s Scholarship And His Knowledge
About Mathematics
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 GodfreyH.
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 [Link]’s 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, in which he found a value for the sum of such series using a technique he invented
that came to be called Ramanujan summation. On the other hand, he knew nothing of doubly periodic functions,
the classical theory of quadratic forms, or Cauchy’s theorem, and he had only the most nebulous idea of what
constitutes a mathematical proof. Though brilliant, many of his theorems on the theory of prime numbers were
wrong.
Future Advances Of Srinivas Ramanujan
In England Ramanujan made further advances, especially in the partition of numbers (the number of
ways that a positive integer can be expressed as the sum of positive integers; e.g., 4 can be expressed
as 4, 3 + 1, 2 + 2, 2 + 1 + 1, and 1 + 1 + 1 + 1). His papers were published in English and European
journals, and in 1918 he was elected 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 (1707–83) and Carl
Jacobi (1804–51). Ramanujan left behind three notebooks and a sheaf of pages (also called the “lost
notebook”) containing many unpublished results that mathematicians continued to verify long after
his death.
Contribution Of Srinivas Ramanujan To Mathematics
Number Theory. He revolutionalized the study of some areas of number theory by making great
contributions. For example, Theory of Partitions, Ramanujan’s tau function, The Rogers-Ramanujan
Continued Fractions, and so on. Most of his research work on Number Theory arose out of q-series
and theta functions. He developed his own theory of elliptic functions, and applied his theory to
develop some truly different areas, like, hypergeometric-like series for 1/pi, class invariants,
continued fractions and many more. The purpose of this course is to give the participants, especially
students and teachers, an exposure to Ramanujan’s theory of q-series and theta functions with
applications to various problems of number theory and related areas.
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC
