Srinivasa Ramanujan Biography

Srinivasa Ramanujan was an Indian mathematician who made significant contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, and continued fractions. What made his achievements really extraordinary was the fact that he received almost no formal training in pure mathematics and started working on his own mathematical research in isolation. Born into a humble family in southern India, he began displaying signs of his brilliance at a young age. He exceled in mathematics as a school student, and mastered a book on advanced trigonometry, written by S. L. Loney, by the time he was 13. While in his mid-teens, he was introduced to the book ‘A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics’ which played an instrumental role in awakening his mathematical genius. By the time he was in his late-teens, he had already investigated the Bernoulli numbers and had calculated the Euler–Mascheroni constant up to 15 decimal places. He was, however, so consumed by mathematics that he was unable to focus on any other subject in college and thus could not complete his degree. After years of struggling, he was able to publish his first paper in the ‘Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society’ which helped him gain recognition. He moved to England and began working with the renowned mathematician G. H. Hardy. Their partnership, though productive, was short-lived as Ramanujan died of an illness at the age of 32.