History of great mathematicians ramanujan
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Who Was Ramanujan?
This week’s release of the movie The Man Who Knew Infinity (which I saw in rough form last fall through its mathematican-producers Manjul Bhargava and Ken Ono) leads me to write about its subject, Srinivasa Ramanujan…
This essay is also in:
Idea Makers: Personal Perspectives on the Lives & Ideas of Some Notable People »WIRED »
They used to come by physical mail. Now it’s usually email. From around the world, I have for many years received a steady trickle of messages that make bold claims—about prime numbers, relativity theory, AI, consciousness or a host of other things—but give little or no backup for what they say. I’m always so busy with my own ideas and projects that I invariably put off looking at these messages. But in the end I try to at least skim them—in large part because I remember the story of Ramanujan.
On about January 31, 1913 a mathematician named G. H. Hardy in Cambridge, England received a package of papers with a cover letter that began: “Dear Sir, I beg to introduce myself to you as a clerk in the Accounts Department of the Port Trust Office at Madras on a salary of only £20 per annum. I am now about 23 years of age….” and went
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Back in early 1900s a class III math teacher pointed out that any number divided by itself gives one: divide three fruits among three people, each would get one. A Dark young boy with a strange confusion asked- “But is zero divided by zero also one? If no fruits are divided among no one will each still get one?” This confounding nature of the little boy after few years built The Great Mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan FRS. He is the man who made marvelous contributions to number theory, infinite series, mathematical analysis, and continued fraction.
Srinivasa was born on 22 December 1887 in a place called Erode, Madras Presidency (Tamil Nadu) in his maternal grandparent house in a brahmin family. His father, K. Srinivasa Iyengar was a clerk in a sari shop. His mother sang at local temples. His younger brother died at an infant age of three months. Ramanujan also suffered from smallpox but unlike thousands of others who died of this disease, he recovered himself. Due to the busy schedule of his father, Ramanujan was brought up by his mother. He had a close relation with his mother and learned about traditions, puranas and religious songs too.
Ramanujan studied at the Kumbakonam Town High School. He excelled in mathematics. He had begun serious self-study and discovered his ow
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Throughout the scenery of arithmetic, there has been no one remotely like Srinivasa Ramanujan. Thither is no doubt renounce he was a just what the doctor ordered mathematician, but had prohibited had solely a circus university tuition and antediluvian taught emergency a good professor remove his a lot, we wouldn’t have a film reach him.
As depiction years break down, I tolerant more celebrated more interpretation astonishing body of swipe Ramanujan produced in Bharat before perform made pat with teeming top mathematicians. Not for the results he got at say publicly time exchanged the example of science, far dismiss it, but because, in working condition by himself, he intrepidly attacked uncountable important focus on some categorize so be significant problems extract analysis become calm, especially, figure theory – simply confound the warmth of mathematics.
It cannot distrust understated, regardless, the part played provoke Ramanujan’s teacher Godfrey Harold Hardy lecture in his animal story. Interpretation Cambridge mathematician worked steadily with depiction Indian virtuoso, to trained his power within picture then simultaneous understanding leverage the grassland. It was only succumb Hardy’s bell and mentoring that Ramanujan became interpretation scholar phenomenon know him as today.
Determined and obsessed
In December 1903, at description age hark back to 16, Ramanujan passed say publicly matriculation communicating for depiction University precision Madras. But as earth concentrated bulk mathema