Remembering a man extraordinaire on his death anniversary
Date : 18/05/2024
(This article is an English translation of an article which originally appeared on Dhinasari.com: https://dhinasari.com/life-style/184849-talk-on-life-and-works-of-maths-genius-srinivasa-ramanujan.html)
Mathematics is a poetry, mathematicians are highly creative poets, how a poet conjures poems with words, a mathematician sees various forms with a row of numbers! God made integers -- all the rest is the work of man, said Leopold Kronecker
In mathematics too numbers hold a special place, numerology is the root of mathematics. Mathematics is the queen of the sciences, and Arithmetic is the queen of mathematics. - Gauss said.
Eric Bell (1883 - 1960) wrote a book titled ‘Men of Mathematics’. He documented the lives and works of various mathematicians: from early Sino days to Archimedes, Bernaud, Pascal and other mathematicians. He chronicled the lives of mathematicians who lived till 1937.
In this, he highlights two mathematical geniuses from India: Srinivasa Ramanujan and S S Pillai. They are both Tamils from our Tamil Nadu.
Indians were pioneers in the field of mathematics, especially Tamils. The manifestation of this is Ramanujan and SS Pillai.
For sheer manipulative ability in tangled algebra Euler and Jacobi have no rival, unless it be the Indian mathematical genius, Srinivasa Ramanujan, in our own century. - ET Bell, P.328
"If I were to score Ramanujan’s mathematical genius, I would give him 100, the great German David Hilbert, a score of 80, Littlewood, the British mathematician, a score of 30, and I would give myself only 25!” said British mathematical genius G H Hardy!
About 85 years ago, an Indian mathematician from Tamil Nadu devised a number of innovative methods to accurately calculate the value of Pi (π) symbol. He is the mathematical genius, Ramanujan. Pi is a number that divides the circumference of a circle by its diameter. It is mathematically referred to as π. In any circle, the value of Pi is constant.
In 1987, the value of Pi was accurately calculated at 100 million decimals. But all its basic approaches were based on the mathematical theories of Ramanujan devised in 1915. The sophisticated methods he envisaged then are now used to solve complex mathematical problems in the computer algorithms.
Ramanujan had a keen interest in mathematics and was unique. He was one of the greatest mathematical geniuses of the 20th century.
Some of Ramanujan's notable mathematical theorems are - 'Analytical theory of numbers', 'Elliptic dependencies', 'Continuing fractions', and 'Infinite series'.
Srinivasa Iyengar Ramanujan was born on December 22, 1887 in Erode district of Tamil Nadu. His father worked as a clerk in a cloth merchant's shop in Kumbakonam, in Tanjore in Tamil Nadu.
Ramanujan went to primary school in Kumbakonam at the age of five. In 1898, at the age of 10, he joined the Town High School in Kumbakonam.
At the age of eleven, he bought and read a book on advanced angles written by SL Loni from two college students who lived in his house. He mastered the book at the age of thirteen. Ramanujan was the best student in high school and won many prizes.
The book "A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics" that he received at the age of sixteen was a turning point in his life. The book is a collection of thousands of easy mathematical results. It was this book that further enhanced Ramanujan's interest in mathematics. He studied many mathematical results in the book and brought to light incredible findings.
In 1904, Ramanujan undertook in-depth research in mathematics. He studied the series (1 / n) and calculated Euler's constant for 15 decimal places. Although Bernoulli's numbers were his own invention, he continued to read them.
Kumbakonam Government College awarded him a scholarship in 1904. But, due to his passion for mathematics, he failed the college examination without passing other subjects. Because of this he was expelled from college. With the help of friends, he led his life completing mathematical discoveries and seeking support for his inventions.
In 1906, Ramanujan joined Pachaiyappa College in Chennai. He was interested in joining the Madras University and intended to pass the first level art examination.
As a continuation of his mathematical work, Ramanujan studied the fractions and diverse series that followed in 1908. His condition worsened and he underwent surgery in 1909.nIt took him a while to recover from that.
Ramanujan married S. Janaki, a 10-year-old girl, on July 14, 1909. During this time he published his first work, ‘Seventeen-Page Bernoulli's Numbers’. It was published in 1911 in the Indian Mathematical Society.
In 1911 Ramanujan approached the founder of the Indian Mathematical Society for his work. With the help of Indian mathematical genius Ramachandra Rao, he got a job as a clerk in the Chennai port. C L T Griffith, a professor of civil engineering at the College of Engineering Guindy, was interested in Ramanujan's talents. Since Griffith was educated at University College London, he knew a professor of mathematics, M.J.M Hill well.
So he sent a copy of Ramanujan's Bernoulli's numbers, published in 1911, to Hill on November 12, 1912. Hill, encouraging it, replied he did not have the talent to understand Ramanujan's 'Results on Divergent Series'.
Ramanujan sent a copy of his book 'Orders Of Infinity', to G H Hardy in 1910. He had also attached a list of mathematical theories. Hardy read everything along with the mathematician Littlewood. Hardy replied to Ramanujan saying that he would like to work with him if he understood the latter’s theorems well.
In May 1913, Madras University awarded Ramanujan with a two-year scholarship. In 1914, the Trinity College in Cambridge invited him to start an extraordinary collaboration. The alliance of Hardy and Ramanujan led to many important studies.
In a joint statement with Hardy, Ramanujan gave the 'Asymptotic Formula for p (n)'. This p (n) has the correct value. Later, the Redmaker proved this.
Ramanujan had many problems settling in London. He belonged to an orthodox Brahmin family and from the beginning he had issues with the food available there. Ramanujan had a long history of health problems and suffered greatly from the unavailability of food items during the First World War.
On March 16, 1916, Ramanujan received his bachelor's degree in research in science from the University of Cambridge. Though he did not have proper qualifications, he was admitted in June 1914.
Ramanujan’s commentary on the Highly Composite Numbers of the Seven Documents was published in the United Kingdom.
In 1917, Ramanujan became seriously ill and, therefore, his doctors feared that he might die. Although his health improved slightly in September, he spent most of his time in various hospitals.
On February 18, 1918, he was elected a member of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. Later, he was also elected by the Royal Society of London.
By the end of November 1918, Ramanujan's health had greatly improved. Later, he sailed for India on February 27, 1919 and arrived on March 13. He died on April 26, 1920, due to poor health, despite medical treatment.
There is no denying that the facts of mathematics discovered by Ramanujan are used in all fields of today's Android age. When Aranganathan, the father of libraries in India, mentions Ramanuja, he says, 'He had a fire inside him. Mathematical studies were unavoidable for him'.
Germany and Sweden hold conferences throughout the year to present research papers under the name of Mathematical genius Ramanujan. Through this the pride of the Tamils is glorified.
In 2012, Ramanujan's 125th birthday was declared National Mathematical Year and his birthday, December 22, was declared National Mathematical Day. Since then, Mathematics Day has been celebrated every December 22nd.
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