In the article, we will talk about Srinivas Ramanujan, a famous mathematician from India. This man has done a lot for this science, and in addition, he is interesting for his biography. All that you want to know about this person, read the article below.
First meeting
Srinivasa Ramanujan is an Indian mathematician who achieved amazing results without having a school education. The most significant work is considered to be a joint work with G. Hardy on the asymptotic behavior of the number of partitions n.
Biographical Information
The hero of our article was born in the winter of 1887 in Erod. This is a small town in the Madras presidency in the south of the country. The boy was born into a Tamil family. His father was an accountant and worked in a small textile shop in Kumbakonam - a small town in Madras province. The mother of the future mathematician was rather strict and religious, therefore he was brought up in the strict traditions of the closed caste of brahmanas. In 1889, the boy falls ill with smallpox, but successfully transfers it and, thus, survives.
School years
When Srinivasa Ramanujan went to school, his mental abilities were immediately revealed here. So, teachers have repeatedly noted his penchant for mathematics. One good acquaintance from Madras, noticing this, gave the guy weighty books on trigonometry, which he gladly accepted and excitedly studied in the evenings.
First discovery
We continue the biography of Srinivasa Ramanujan, who already at the age of 4 made his first discovery. Want to know which one? This child discovered Euler's formula for sines and cosines. I must say that when the guy found out that this formula was already known and published by another scientist, he was very upset. However, such a small failure did not stop him, but, on the contrary, added heat and desire to learn complex discipline.
A turning point
The formulas of Ramanujan originate from his childhood, namely from the moment when he got into the hands of a book at the age of 16. It was a collection of works by J.Sh. Carr, a famous mathematician. His work was called "Collection of elementary results of applied and pure mathematics." At the same time, we note that the book was written almost 25 years before the events described, but nevertheless it made a huge impact on the teenager and determined his future fate. By the way, the researchers later carefully analyzed this work precisely because it was associated with the name of Srinivasa Ramanujan.
The book had more than 6 thousand different formulas and theories, but at the same time almost all of them were presented without evidence. The boy’s immersion in this huge work determined his fate. It was this book that influenced the guy’s way of thinking and the peculiar way of finding solutions in mathematics.
Relocation
Indian mathematician moved to Cambridge. But how? This is a long story, and it begins with the fact that the young man decided to write a letter to a professor from Cambridge University in 1913. In a letter, he talked about himself, namely that he had not received special education and had been doing mathematics on his own for many years. In a letter to Godfrey Hardy, the guy wrote that he would like to publish his discoveries, but he is too poor and does not have the means to do so. He very much requested that they be published if they would be of interest to the professor.
Interestingly, a correspondence ensued between the homegrown mathematician Ramanujan and a world-class professor. They wrote a lot and often, their conversations grew longer. So, G. Hardy ended up with over 100 formulas of the hero of our article. However, Godfrey was an honest man, and he did not want on his own behalf to publish all the achievements of his friend. That is why he persuades him to move to Cambridge, which he commits at the age of 27.
In cambridge
The mathematician Ramanujan becomes a member of the Royal Society of England and a professor at Cambridge University. Note that this man was the first Indian who managed to rise so high and achieve such heights.
From this moment, many of his published works began to appear, which cause colleagues not only surprise, but also misunderstanding. How could a guy without education achieve this?
The boy from Chennai (India) is quickly becoming the center of attention. And at the same time, the mathematical world of this person was built on basic knowledge and a huge number of observations of specific numbers that he had accumulated throughout his childhood. The main feature of this guy was that he could notice huge numerical arrays. His contemporaries considered him a real exotic miracle. Yes there, even today, scientists are amazed at his abilities.
Mathematics: Number Theory
What were the scientific achievements and results of the hero of our article? We note immediately that the circle of his mathematical interests was very wide, which is not surprising with his abilities. He studied smooth numbers, the quadrature of a circle, sums and functions, integrals, infinite series, etc. We won’t enumerate everything, since an ordinary person is hardly strong in such concepts.
An important merit of Srinivasa Ramanujan Iyengor is that he found several solutions of the Euler equations and formulated more than 120 theorems. Modern mathematicians believe that Srinivasa was and remains the world's largest connoisseur of continued fractions. He discovered a formula based on which the sum of a number series with continued fractions equals an expression in which there is a product of e by n. The mathematician also proposed a formula for calculating the number n. At the same time, incredible accuracy is achieved, namely 600 correct values. It is these formulas that Ramanujan sent G. Hardy.
Confession
This mathematician is recognized throughout the world, which is not surprising. Regardless of whether someone likes his successes or not, they are really amazing. Such nugget geniuses are born very rarely, but they completely change the course of development of some events, as Srinivasa Ramanujan changed mathematical science. Godfrey Hardy, already known to us, said that the formulas of the Indian genius must be true, otherwise no one would just have the imagination to create them.
It is interesting that the formulas and theorems of his hands very often pop up and intersect with the modern branches of mathematics, although at that time they were not even known about them.
And what did the man himself think about his talent? Surprisingly, his explanation was rather trivial. Srinivasa said that all knowledge comes to him during sleep or prayer, and the goddess Namagiri whispers to them.
To preserve the huge number of works of this unique mathematician, in 1957 a two-volume work was published at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research with copies of the drafts of the great master of numbers.
Godfrey Hardy later said that he did not understand the modern education system, which was too narrow and rigid. He emphasized that Kumbakonamsky College made the biggest mistake in its history and rejected Srinivas. But his training required a rather small amount, which would be enough to obtain basic knowledge and communication with talented mathematicians. And then the world would have received an outstanding unique scientist, who, perhaps, was able to create much more formulas and theorems and advance all science.
Today, this person’s name is named graphs, numbers, theorems, sums, function, hypothesis. It is amazing and incomprehensible how the young man managed to achieve so much.
Mention of this extraordinary mathematics is in the cinema. So, a feature film was shot in 2014, “Ramanujan” in India, which tells the story of a poor and talented boy who, perhaps, was ruined by the then education system. In 2015, the film "The Man Who Knew Infinity" was released in the UK. It was shot based on the biography of R. Kanigel. The heroine of the series “Numbers”, namely Amita Ramanujan, was named after the great discoverer.
Interesting Facts
It is known that in his drafts the mathematician separately considered the number 1729. He was informed about it by G. Hardy, who said that he visited Srinivas in the hospital and came to him in a taxi with exactly this number. He told the Indian that he considered this number to be almost the most boring, with which he absolutely did not agree and said that it is the smallest natural number that can be represented in different ways as the sum of cubes. Currently, science already knows more than 5 similar numbers, but the search continues to this day.
In the archives of the University of Cambridge, records of Ramanujan were found, namely his “Lost Notebook”. Researchers discovered it only in 2013. Examining different boxes of papers, one man discovered an old sheet, which turned out to be a suicide note by an Indian mathematician. And what was in it? Of course the formulas!
A mathematician from Chennai (India) went into the world in the spring of 1920 in Cattput. This is a small suburb of the Madras Presidency. The man seemed to feel that his death was near, and hastened to return to his homeland. The cause could lie in tuberculosis amid general stress, exhaustion and severe malnutrition. At the same time, it was suggested that the man could have amoebiasis.
Summing up the article, I want to say that Srinivasa is an amazing person and scientist who, despite all the obstacles, was moving towards his goal. He came across kind and understanding people on his life path, thanks to whom he managed to unveil the lion's share of discoveries. And it’s wonderful that in the world there remained selfless people serving their cause!