Srinivasa Ramanujan Aiyangar

Who Was He?

In a small town in southern India, far from the great libraries of Europe, a boy was born on December 22, 1887, in Erode, Tamil Nadu. His name: Srinivasa Ramanujan. He grew up in Kumbakonam, where his brilliance with numbers first began to shine — long before the world ever heard his name.

With no access to formal training in advanced mathematics, and armed only with a worn-out book (A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics by G.S. Carr), Ramanujan began to develop new ideas in number theory, continued fractions, infinite series, and more.

By his late teens, he had already developed the infinite series for π, a formula more efficient than any known at the time. But he lived in poverty, working as a clerk in the Madras Port Trust in 1912, while scribbling formulas during office breaks on loose papers and in three now-famous notebooks.

The Self-Taught Genius

Ramanujan’s early discoveries included:

• Highly composite numbers (1915)
• Generalizations of the binomial theorem
• Deep studies into divisor functions and Euler's constants
• His famous formula for 1/π, which still stuns mathematicians for its beauty and convergence speed

All of these were developed without formal proofs — because he had never been taught how to write one. He believed the results came to him from Goddess Namagiri, as visions and dreams.

The 1913 Letter That Changed Everything

In January 1913, Ramanujan sent a handwritten letter to G.H. Hardy, a professor at Trinity College, Cambridge. The letter contained over 120 theorems — many of which Hardy had never seen before.

Hardy shared it with fellow mathematician J.E. Littlewood. They were stunned. Hardy later wrote:
I had never seen anything in the least like them before.

He immediately invited Ramanujan to England. After some hesitation due to religious concerns, Ramanujan sailed to England in March 1914.

Genius Meets the World

Ramanujan arrived at Cambridge in April 1914, just months before the outbreak of World War I. In spite of war, homesickness, a vegetarian diet in wartime England, and recurring illness, Ramanujan’s creativity exploded.

His major achievements during the Cambridge years (1914–1919) include:

• 1916: Earned a Bachelor of Science by Research (equivalent to a PhD) from Cambridge
• 1917: Elected a Fellow of the Cambridge Philosophical Society
• 1918: Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) — one of the youngest ever, and only the second Indian at that time
• 1918: Became a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge — a rare honor

During these years, he co-authored five major papers with Hardy and published over 30 original papers in journals like Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society and Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society.

Some of his most profound discoveries included:

• Partition formula: A precise asymptotic formula for the partition function , which counts the number of ways a number can be split into parts
• Mock Theta Functions: Mysterious and deeply elegant series that remained poorly understood until the 21st century
• Ramanujan-Hardy Number 1729: The famous “taxicab number”

Hardy: “I came in a taxi numbered 1729 — it seemed dull.”

Ramanujan: “No, it is a very interesting number. It is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.”

1729 = 1³ + 12³ = 9³ + 10³

Gone Too Soon, But Never Forgotten

After years of cold, malnutrition, and illness, Ramanujan returned to India in March 1919. He continued to work from his sickbed, producing more theorems and even sending letters to Hardy describing his Mock Theta Functions.

He passed away on April 26, 1920, at the age of just 32 — a devastating loss to the mathematical world.

But his work was far from over.

The “Lost Notebook” and Eternal Influence

In 1976, over half a century after his death, mathematician George Andrews discovered Ramanujan’s lost notebook in the archives of Trinity College. This 87-page manuscript contained results that had never been published — many of which are still being explored today.

Ramanujan's ideas now influence:

• String theory and quantum physics
• Black hole entropy (via modular forms)
• Computer science and cryptography
• Modern number theory

His legacy continues to grow, with scholars, physicists, and engineers still finding use in his formulas.

Why Ramanujan Matter

Ramanujan is not just a name in history. He is a symbol of:

• Imagination without boundaries
• Faith without fear
• Genius without privilege

He proved that even without; resources or degrees, the mind — if nourished by passion and belief — can touch the infinite.

The Legacy Lives On

• The Man Who Knew Infinity (2015), starring Dev Patel, brought his story to the big screen
• His birthday, December 22, is celebrated in India as National Mathematics Day
• Institutions like the Ramanujan Institute for Advanced Study in Mathematics carry his name proudly

Timeline of Srinivasa Ramanujan

A Final Tribute

Your chalk scribbles became the language of stars.
Your faith became your formula.
Your silence spoke through equations we are still trying to understand.

Thank you, Srinivasa Ramanujan.
You didn’t just know infinity — you brought it closer to all of us.