In the article we will talk about Srinivasa Ramanujan, a famous mathematician from India. This man did a lot for this science, and besides, he is interesting for his biography. Everything you wanted 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 the joint work with G. Hardy on the asymptotics of the number of partitions n.
Biography
The hero of our article was born in the winter of 1887 in Erode. 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 the province of Madras. The mother of the future mathematician was quite strict and religious, so he was brought up in the rigid traditions of a closed Brahmin caste. In 1889, a boy falls ill with smallpox, but successfully endures it and thus survives.
School years
When SrinivasaRamanujan went to school, where his mental abilities immediately showed up. So, teachers have repeatedly noted his penchant for mathematics. A good acquaintance from Madras, noticing this, gave the guy weighty books on trigonometry, which he gladly accepted and enthusiastically studied in the evenings.
First discovery
We continue the biography of Srinivasa Ramanujan, who made his first discovery at the age of 4. Do you 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 study a difficult discipline.
Turning Point
Ramanujan's formulas originate from his childhood, namely from the moment when a book fell into his hands at the age of 16. It was the collected works of J. S. 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, later researchers carefully analyzed this work precisely because it was associated with the name of Srinivasa Ramanujan.
There were more than 6 thousand different formulas and theories in the book, but almost all of them were presented without proof. Dive the boy into this great jobdetermined his fate. It was this book that influenced the way the guy thinks and the peculiar way of finding solutions in mathematics.
Moving
Indian mathematician moved to Cambridge. But how? It's a long story, and it starts with a young man deciding to write a letter to a professor at Cambridge University in 1913. In the letter, he spoke about himself, namely that he had not received a 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 begged them to be published if the professor was interested.
Interestingly, a correspondence began between the homegrown mathematician Ramanujan and the world-famous professor. They wrote a lot and often, their conversations became longer and longer. So, G. Hardy ended up with more than 100 formulas of the hero of our article. However, Godfrey was an honest man, and he did not want to publish in his own name all the achievements of his friend. That is why he persuades him to move to Cambridge, which he does at the age of 27.
In Cambridge
Mathematician Ramanujan becomes a Fellow 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 on, many of his printed works begin to appear, which cause colleagues not only surprise, but also misunderstanding. Like a guy withouteducation was able to achieve this?
A 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 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. Why, even today, scientists are amazed at his abilities.
Math: Number Theory
What were the scientific achievements and results of the hero of our article? We note at once that the range of his mathematical interests was very wide, which is not surprising with his abilities. He studied smooth numbers, squaring the circle, sums and functions, integrals, infinite series, etc. We won’t list everything, since an ordinary person is hardly strong in such concepts.
An important merit of Srinivasa Ramanujan Iyengora is that he found several solutions to the Euler equations and formulated more than 120 theorems. Modern mathematicians believe that Srinivasa was and remains the world's greatest expert on continued fractions. He discovered a formula based on which the sum of a number series with continued fractions is equal to an expression in which there is a product of e and n. The mathematician also proposed a formula for calculating the number n. This achieves incredible accuracy, namely 600 correct values. It was these formulas that Ramanujan sent to G. Hardy.
Recognition
This mathematician is recognized all over the world, which is not surprising at all. Whether someone likes his successes or not, they are truly amazing. Such nugget geniuses are very rare, but they completely change the course of some events, just as Srinivasa Ramanujan changed the science of mathematics. Godfrey Hardy, already known to us, said that the formulas of the Indian genius must be correct, otherwise no one would simply have had enough imagination to create them.
It's interesting that the formulas and theorems of his hand very often pop up and intersect with modern sections of mathematics, although at that time they were not even known at that time.
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 them.
In order to preserve the huge amount of work of this unique mathematician, in 1957, a 2-volume work was published at the Tata Institute for Basic Research with copies of the drafts of the great master of numbers.
Later, Godfrey Hardy said that he did not understand the modern education system, which is too narrow and rigid. He emphasized that Kumbakonam College made the biggest mistake in its history and rejected Srinivasa. But for his education, a rather small amount was required, which would be enough to obtain basic knowledge and communicate with talented mathematicians. And then the world would have received an outstanding unique scientist who,perhaps managed to create many more formulas and theorems and advance all of science.
Today, graphs, numbers, theorems, sums, function, hypothesis are named after this person. It is amazing and incomprehensible how a young man managed to achieve so much.
Mentions of this extraordinary mathematics are in the cinema. So, a feature film was shot in 2014 "Ramanujan" in India, which told 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 filmed based on the biography of R. Kanigela. 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. It was reported by G. Hardy, who said that he visited Srinivas in the hospital and came to him by taxi with this number. He told the Indian that he considered this number almost the most boring, with which he absolutely disagreed and said that it was the smallest natural number that can be represented in various ways as a sum of cubes. At present, science already knows more than 5 similar numbers, but the search continues to this day.
Ramanujan's notes, namely his "Lost Notebook", were found in the archives of the University of Cambridge. Researchers discovered it only in 2013. Looking through different boxes of papers, one man found an oldleaf, which turned out to be the suicide note of an Indian mathematician. And what was in it? Formulas, of course!
A mathematician from Chennai (India) passed away in the spring of 1920 in Chetput. This is a small suburb in the Madras Presidency. The man seemed to feel that his death was near, and hurried back to his homeland. The reason could lie in tuberculosis against the background of general stress, exhaustion of the body and severe malnutrition. At the same time, there were suggestions that the man could have had amoebiasis.
Summing up the results of the article, I would like to say that Srinivasa is an amazing person and scientist who, despite all the obstacles, went to his goal. He came across on the path of life kind and understanding people, thanks to whom he managed to publish the lion's share of discoveries. And it's wonderful that there are selfless people in the world who serve their cause!
