Srinivas Ramanujam; A great man




The man in the picture is Srinivas Ramanujam, who I believe was the second most amazing and brilliant mind that the world got to witness, first would be Da Vinci. When he was just 15 years old he gets a copy of a mathematics book called Synopsis of Elementary results in pure and applied mathematics. This book contains thousands of theorems many with very brief proof, he learns, understands all of them and goes beyond them. He gets a scholarship to Madras University in India for his studies but it’s taken away just a year later because he fails all the subjects except for Mathematics.

Lives in very poor conditions but still manages to publish his paper in the Journals of Indian Mathematical society, begins his correspondence with GH Hardy, one of the pioneer mathematician of his time, gets a chance to work under him Trinity College, Cambridge to work under Hardy. Ramanujam’s knowledge of mathematics was amazing and he was able to work with many major problems of his time without having any information about modern progress in the same field i.e his knowledge of mathematics came from himself. GH Hardy, his mentor had said that he was fortunate enough to work with two greatest minds of the world Ramanujam and Littlewood. GH Hardy also said that he learnt more from Ramanujam than what Ramanujam learnt from him.

Ramanujam died from TB (maybe a genetic disorder) when he was just 32 years old but one year before his death he started writing on loose sheets of paper which later became his lost book. This book contains more than 500 formulas without any words and proof. You can imagine that more than 30 research papers of famous British mathematician GN Watson was motivated by assertions made by Ramanujam to GH Hardy in his letters and his notebook. American mathematician George Andrew said his discovery of mock theta function during the 1970s was already listed in the lost notebook when he got an opportunity to have a look at them in 1976, although not explained in details but it included what was Andrew’s full notes on this.

Unlike many other activists, warriors and public figures if Ramanujam had stayed alive for 5 more years mankind would have much greater chance of looking in the God’s eyes.

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