Srinivasa Ramanujan

Srinivasa Ramanujan

Srinivasa Ramanujan was born on 22 December 1887 in Erode, Madras Presidency, now in Tamil Nadu. He is a man known for his work done in the field of mathematics. And that too with no formal training of that subject which others are getting in European countries. Ramanujan developed his own mathematical research in isolation. Some extraordinary contribution done by him in the field of mathematics are – mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions. Along with this, the legend has provided many theorems.

Education

He was enrolled into Telegu School, but found it too tiring and uninteresting to attend school and mostly he use to ran away from there. Later in 1904, he graduated from Town Higher Secondary School.

He also received a scholarship to study at Government Arts College in Kumbakonam. During his studies he was so influenced by studying mathematics that he could not focus on any other subject and failed in all of them. This resulted him in losing the scholarship. Later, without any degree, he left the college and continued to pursue independent research in mathematics.

Career

His unconditional love for mathematics was driving him to develop new things for that subject, but to support his livelihood he was working as a clerk in the Accountant-General's office at the Madras Port Trust Office. He kept working on inventing new mathematical theorems and continuously tried contacting the experts from west. G.H. Hardy, an academician at the University of Cambridge, recognized the brilliant work produced by Ramanujan and invited him to visit and work with him at Cambridge. Here, Ramanujan became a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

Some of the known works, produced by this great mind, are - Landau–Ramanujan constant, Mock theta functions, Ramanujan conjecture, Ramanujan prime, Ramanujan–Soldner constant, Ramanujan theta function, Ramanujan's sum, Rogers–Ramanujan identities and Ramanujan's master theorem.

At the End

Ramanujan died on 26th April, 1920, when he was only 32 years of age. His death occurred untimely because of illness, malnutrition, and possibly liver infection. In this short life he gave around 3900 results, mostly equations and identities and almost all of them prove to be correct and original.