Srinivasa Ramanujan - A Biography
A Glimpse into The Life of a Self-Taught Mathematical Genius
Nov 16, 2009
Srinivasa Iyengar Ramanujan (1887 - 1920) was undoubtedly one of the greatest mathematical geniuses of all times. Born in a village in the state of Tamil Nadu in India, Ramanujan proved himself to be an exceptional student at an early age, excelling in almost every subject taught at school. However, he had little or no formal training in mathematics, and he was primarily a self-taught mathematician.
At the age of 16, Ramanujan came across a book called Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics (George Shoobridge Carr, 1886) which ignited his interest in mathematics. He began work on geometric series and cubic, quadratic and quintic equations. He survived in the poorest of circumstances and was forced to drop out of college owing to lack of funds.
His first paper, which comprised of his findings on Bernoulli numbers, was published in 1911 in the Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society.
Ramanujan Finds a Collaborator in G. H. Hardy
For want of a better opportunity, Ramanujan took up a clerical job at the Madras Post Trust. He wrote to mathematical professors and scholars, looking for support. English mathematician G H Hardy almost dismissed his letter the first time but decided to give it a second, closer look in consultation with one of his colleagues. Hardy was impressed with Ramanujan’s mathematical results and invited him to come to Cambridge.
With Hardy’s validation in place, Ramanujan sailed to England in 1914 and continued his work on number theory, continued fractions, elliptic functions and infinite series. He worked in collaboration with Hardy and Cambridge gave him a Bachelor of Science degree by research, in recognition of his work. He was later also honored with a Fellowship of the Royal Society.
His lack of formal education was apparent in the fact that he failed to distinguish statements that needed a formal proof, from ones that were intuitively true. A number of the theorems he conjectured were brilliant but inaccurate.
Ramanujan’s Death – A Tragic Loss to the Mathematical Community
In England, Ramanujan faced a diametrically different climate from what he had been accustomed to in India. He also had to do all his own cooking in order to adhere to the strict dietary restrictions imposed by his religious sect. He fell severely ill and was hospitalized for some time.
When Hardy visited him in hospital, he mentioned that he had taken cab number 1729, and that was an uninteresting number. Ramanujan contradicted him and pointed out that it was the smallest number that could be expressed as the sum of two positive perfect cubes in two distinct ways. 1729 = 12 ^ 3 + 1 ^ 3 = 10 ^ 3 + 9 ^ 3. This number came to be known as the Ramanujan number, or sometimes as the Hardy-Ramanujan number.
Ramanujan recovered enough to travel back to India in 1919, but his health failed again shortly afterwards and he died in 1920. He left behind some published works and a series of notebooks with his findings and results. These notebooks have been extensively studied since, and have led their author to be recognized as an exceptional genius.
References and Resources
Encyclopedia Britannica’s article on Srinivasa Ramanujan, Encyclopedia Britannica Online, 24 November 2009.
Wolfram World’s Biography of Ramanujan, by Eric W. Weisstein
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