Birth

Srinivasa Ramanujan was born on 22nd December 1887 to Kuppuswamy Srinivasa Iyengar and Komalatammal in Erode District of TamilNadu. Kuppuswamy Srinivasa Iyengar was the clerk in a saree boutique.  Raamanujan’s mother is a housewife, who used to sing at the local temple. Ramanujan had two younger siblings from the year 1891 to 1894, but both of them died before the completion of one year.

Srinivasa Ramanujan Education

Ramanujan made his registration 1st October 1892 in a local school. When he moved to Kumbakonam with his mother, there he made the registration in Kangayan Primary School. His academic performance was good at Kangayan Primary School. In November 1897, he cleared his primary Exams in Tamil, English, Arithmetic and Geography with good scores in the District before his 10th age. Then in the same year, Ramanujan got into the Town Higher Secondary School, where he saw the formal mathematics for the first time.

Later he got a scholarship that gave him the opportunity to study at Government Arts College in Kumbakonam. Then he had done the registration to study at Pachaiyappa’s College in Madras. In that college, Ramanujan cleared in Mathematics by answering the chosen questions and leaving the other questions without answering them. But his performance was very poor in the other subjects like English, Physiology and Sanskrit.

Early Life

Ramanujan was one of the victims of smallpox, due to which 4000 people died in December 1889 at Tanjavore District. He had close bonding with his mother, since Ramanujan’s father was at the work for most of the time. From his mother, he learned about puranas and their family culture like singing songs and performing poojas.  He gained the knowledge of Mathematics from two College students who were staying in his home at the age of 11. At his 13th age, he excelled well in mathematics by finding out new theorems. For the first time, he got merit certificates and academic awards.

Personal Life

Ramanujan was married to Janaki (Janakiammal) on 14th July 1909. Ramanujan had no children.

Srinivasa Ramanujan Life Career

In 1902, he got a chance to learn the way to solve the cubic equations. Then Ramanujan found his own method to the quartic. At his 16th age, in 1903, through his friend, he got the library book A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics, which is the set of 5000 theorems. Ramanujan with his own thinking, formed the Berneulli numbers and made the calculations for the Euler-Mascheroni constant up to 15 decimal places. In 1904, after his graduation at the Town Higher Secondary School, Ramanujan won the Ranganatha Rao prize from the school’s headmaster Krishnaswami Iyer for the Mathematics.

After undergoing surgery in 1910, he stayed at his friend’s house and made a search for job in Madras.  He took tuitions for the students of Presidency College who were preparing for the F.A exam to earn money.  In the same year, fearing of his health conditions, Ramanujan gave his notebooks Radhakrisha Iyer(his friend) to hand them over to a Mathematics professor at Pachaiyappa’s College. After his health recovery, Ramanujan got back his notebooks and moved to Villupuram.

Later Ramanujan moved to Madras with his wife and his mother in 1912. Initially, they lived in a house on the Saiva Muthaiah Mudali Street(in Madras) and moved to Madras Triplicane, after Ramanujan got a research job at Madras University in 1913.

Srinivasa Ramanujan Contribution to Mathematics

In 1902, Ramanujan used his own method to solve the quartic. Then in 1903, he made a try to solve the quintic knowing that quintic cannot be solved using the radicals. An English Mathematician G.H.Hardy got an unusual letter in 1903 from a clerk (Srinivasa Ramanujan) of Madras, whom Hardy had never met before. This letter of 10 pages had nearly 120 statements of theorems on improper integrals, infinite series, number theory and fractions.

On seeing the Ramanujan’s theorem on continued fractions on the last page, Hardy got admired and told that, he had not seen anything before like these theorems. Before contacting G.H Hardy, Ramanujan had sent his works through the letter to the mathematicians like E.W.Hobson and H.F.Baker. But both of them, returned his mathematical papers without any reply. With great effort Ramanujan made out a formula to compute (pi) in 1914. This discovery by him is the basics for the modern algorithms to solve the pi.

Ramanujan was known as the research scholar at the Madras University in TamilNadu and got his double clerk salary. But, he needs to present the quarterly reports on his work. Ramanujan had left several unsolved mathematical equations, theorems and conjectures that are useful in modern discoveries.

Srinivasa Ramanujan work in London

Ramanujan took departure to London from Madras on 17th March 1914. In England, Neville was waiting with a car to pick him up. He made collaboration with Hardy and Littlewood in terms of culture, views and working format. Ramanujan and Hardy were dissimilar personalities. He spent almost five years in Cambridge and made some of the publications there.  Finally in March 1916, Ramanujan got a Bachelor of Science Degree for his research work on highly composite numbers. Later, Ramanujan was elected to London Mathematical Society on 6th December 1917.  In 1918, he was elected as the Fellow of the Royal Society at his 31st age. Then for his analysis in the Theory of Numbers and Elliptic functions, he was elected. Later he became the first Indian to be elected a Fellow of Trinity College in Cambridge on 13th October 1918.

Srinivasa Ramanujan Achievements

Ramanujan gave out the set of formulae that stays as the unfound mathematical problem for later generations. G.H.Hardy gave the statement that Ramanujan’s discoveries are highly magnificent.

Ramanujan became the second person from India to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Fame

In 1997, The Ramanujan Journal was started, that made the publications in the mathematical areas which had the influence of Ramanujan.

The house in which Ramanujan lived in Sarangapani Sannidhi Street in Kumbakonam is now the museum.

Death

Srinivasa Ramanujan was suffering from a serious Vitamin deficiency and Tuberculosis, for which he stayed in Sanatorium. In 1920, Ramanujan died at the age of 32, after he came back to the Kumbakonam in Madras Presidency.Posted in Scientist