Tuesday, 12 September 2017

Ramanujan, Srinivasa Aiyangar

Ramanujan, Srinivasa Aiyangar

                                                            (1887–1920)Indian                                                                                                                                      Number Theory
  1. The Indian mathematician Ramanujan led a short life full of mathematics. From a highly disadvantageous background, he was able to make substantial contributions to number theory. His feverish preoccupation with mathematics, bordering on obsession, is remarkable for its intensity and devotion. He is remembered as one of India’s greatest mathematical geniuses.
  2. Srinivasa Aiyangar Ramanujan was born in Erode, Madras Province, India, on December 22,1887. Although descended from the Brahman caste, his family was quite poor, as his father was a bookkeeper for a local cloth merchant. He excelled in his early education, and in 1900 he began his own investigations of mathematics. In 1903 he borrowed G.S. Carr’s Synopsis of Pure Mathematics, which contained thousands of theorems. Ramanujan quickly devoured this book,and mathematics became his sole interest.
  3. It is said of Ramanujan that he was quiet and meditative, with a fondness for numerical calculations and an unusual memory. In 1904 he won a fellowship at Government College, but failed to graduate due to his neglect of English.For a time he was without a definite occupation;he spent his time jotting down results and computations in a little notebook. In 1909, at age 22, he married, at the arrangement of his mother,a 9-year old girl. Shortly thereafter he secured a job as a clerk, and in 1912 worked at the Madras Port Trust. At this time, his first publication appeared, titled Some Properties of Bernoulli Numbers (1911), a communication on series, infinite products, and a geometric approximate construction of pi. In the Madras area, he was increasingly recognized for his brilliant work.

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