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Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887 - 1920)

The man who knew infinity

Srinivasa Ramanujan is widely considered to be the greatest
mathematician of the 20th century, comparable only to the all time greats
Euler, Jacobi and Gauss in terms of natural genius. Growing up in South
India in circumstances of real poverty, with little formal higher education
and no university degree, he was, however gifted with a supernatural mind
for not just mathematics but pure mathematics. He immersed himself in
mathematical research and recorded his results in his famous "notebooks",
never caring where his next meal would come from. He died at the young
age of 32 and incredibly, by the time of his death, he had won over the
mathematical establishment in India and been invited to Trinity College
Cambridge where he continued to do research in pure mathematics for five
years alongside the two leading British mathematicians of the time,
Professors Hardy and Littlewood. He left behind some 4000 original
theorems. How was this possible?

Ramanujan was born in a small village in Tamil Nadu in 1887 to a poor but
orthodox Brahmin family. Having done very well in primary and secondary
schools and shown himself to be particularly brilliant in mathematics,
something totally unexpected happened to make him fail university
entrance examinations not once but twice. The supernatural mind for
mathematics with which he was evidently gifted led to his being totally
seduced by and wrapped up in this subject to the exclusion of all others,
hence to his failing to gain entry to the University of Madras.

Ramanujan never lost confidence in himself and he reconciled himself to a
life of poverty and hardship as long as he could immerse himself full time in
his mathematics. He went around like an ascetic, accepting food from
friends and well wishers and showing his notebooks filled with
mathematical discoveries to potential patrons to seek their support for his
work. There were moments of starvation which were always round the
corner such that, even a few years later, in one of his letters to Professor
Hardy of Cambridge seeking his support for a research scholarship at the
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University of Madras, he wrote: "I am already a halfstarving man. To

preserve my brain I want food....".

The time spent indulging in mathematics and neglecting other subjects
soon had something to show for it. At 11, Ramanujan was lent a book on
advanced trigonometry by Loney and completely mastered it. At 13, he
was discovering sophisticated theorems of his own. He was already
familiar with Infinite Series. But the great transformation happened at 16
when he came across a book which was to awaken the mathematical genius
in him. It was " A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied
Mathematics " by G. S. Carr a collection of some 5000 theorems with little
by way of proof. Ramanujan dug into it and set about to demonstrate all
the assertions of the book. Not only did he become more conversant with
modern mathematics but he went on to develop his own theorems and
ideas all recorded in his notebooks.

Thereafter, Ramanujan's output was prolific and he published widely in
The Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society. In due course, he earned
the respect and awe of the mathematical establishment in South India. With
their help, he wrote to mathematicians in London and Cambridge but a
single one, Professor G. Hardy of Cambridge, was able to spot his genius
and actively helped him come over.

Ramanujan arrived in Cambridge in 1914. For the next five years he
collaborated with Hardy and Littlewood. The blend of Hardy's technical
expertise and Ramanujan's raw brilliance was unstoppable. He produced
some 36 papers, 6 of which in collaboration with Hardy. He worked
extensively on number theory and also on partition function, Pi, Highly
composite numbers, hypergeometric series, mock theta function and other
areas. As a result of these mathematically productive years, Ramanujan
was showered with honours:

1. BA degree by research from the University of Cambridge.
2. Fellow of the Royal Society of London.
3. Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
4. Member of the London Mathematical Society.
5. Member of the London Philosophical Society.
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Midway through his stay in London, Ramanujan developed a debilitating
illness of obscure nature which remained undiagnosed to the end. It was
suspected to be tuberculosis but later thought not to be so. He returned to
India in 1918 to great acclaim but died a year later. During this last year, he
worked feverishly right to the end, making perhaps his most important
discovery Mock Theta Functions.

A couple of top mathematicians at Cambridge, Watson and Wilson, spent
some twelve years working on Ramanujan's notebooks and managed to
edit only part of them. It was left to Bruce. E. Berndt, Professor of
Mathematics at the University of Illinois, USA, to undertake proper editing
of these notebooks and, after 20 years of doing nothing else, published the
results in five volumes in the 1990's. Berndt and Andrews (Professor of
Mathematics at the University of Pensylvania, USA) next edited the "Lost
Notebook", containing Ramanujan's work during the last year before his
death and recently published their results in another four volumes.
Therefore, it is only relatively recently that the full impact of the work of
Ramanujan has been appreciated. Thus has it been written "Ramanujan's
legacy in the Notebooks promises not only to enrich pure mathematics but
also to find application in various fields of mathematical physics such as the
hard hexagon model, the super string theory and the behaviour of black
holes as well as in polymer chemistry and cancer research.

Said Hardy at one stage: I have never met his equal and can compare him
only with Euler or Jacobi before continuing "Suppose we rate
mathematicians on the basis of pure talent on a scale from 0 to 100, I
would give myself 25, Littlewood 30, Hilbert 80 and Ramanujan 100 ".