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 It
may seem new ground.
But as they pursue unsolved problems, Mathematicians the
world over, have invariably found the footprints of one who
has already been that way. Mathematical genius Srinivasa
Ramanujan.
Born on December 22nd, 1887 at Erode in Tamil Nadu,
Srinivasa Ramanujan showed no signs of extraordinary talent
at school in Kumbakonam. His father was an accounts clerk
and the family was far from being moneyed. At 12, Ramanujan
happened to lay his hands on S L Linney's Plane
Trigonometry. And he was smitten for the rest of his short
life.
His single-minded obsession with solving Mathematical
problems left him with no time for any other subject. He
failed the Entrance Examinations to Madras University
twice.
In 1909, he got a job at the Madras Port Trust. The same
year he married. Fortunately, his superiors at the Port
Trust encouraged Ramanujan's pursuit of Mathematical
solutions. By 1913, he had solved thousands of problems
without any serious recognition of his contribution.
Finally, it was Cambridge's Professor G H Hardy who
responded to Ramanujan's letter and invited him to Trinity
College, Cambridge. From 1914 to 1919, Ramanujan, through
the efforts of Hardy, astounded the world with his genius.
He was elected Fellow of the Cambridge Philosophical
Society, Royal Society of London and Trinity College
Cambridge.
But this period also saw a physical decline, aggravated by
problems with his diet (he was a strict vegetarian). In
1919, he returned to home in Madras. He died on April 22nd,
1920 leaving behind papers that continue to challenge
mathematicians today. Among his considerable contributions
are those to the analytical theory of numbers, elliptic
functions, continued fractions and infinite series.
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