The great mathematician
By: Vinod Chandrashekhar Dixit
Every year, 22 December is observed as National Mathematics Day to mark the birth anniversary of Srinivasa Ramanujan, a legendary Indian mathematician.
Mathematics plays a crucial role in understanding all sorts of subjects such as science, music, social studies and even art. Srinivasa Ramanujan was a famous Indian Mathematician who lived during the British rule in India. Ramanujan was born on 22nd December 1887 into a Tamil Brahmin family in Erode, Madras. His father, Kuppuswamy Srinivasa Iyengar hailed from Thanjavur district and worked as a clerk in a Saree shop. His mother, Komalatammal, was a housewife and used to sing at a local temple. They lived in a small traditional home. He became well versed with the Brahmin culture and followed particular eating habits. Just before turning ten, he passed his primary education in English, Tamil, geography and arithmetic. His scores were the best in the district.
Ramanujan was one of the greatest mathematicians of India whose contribution to the theory of numbers has been profound. He was indeed a mathematical phenomenon of the twentieth century. He made some important contributions to the discipline, including number theory, infinite series, mathematical analysis, and continued fractions.
He was deeply religious and united spirituality and mathematics. For him the zero represented the Absolute Reality. Researchers are still struggling to understand the source of his remarkable genius in mathematics.
Since childhood, he was drawn towards maths and took a particular interest in learning the subject. He did not receive formal education in mathematics but had mastered maths in various sections. During his time in Cambridge, he grew close to the great mathematician named Hardy. He had been dealing with health problems since childhood. However, around 1918, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis after which he returned to his family in India and died in 1920.
Ramanujan found mathematics as a profound manifestation of the Reality. He was such a great mathematician and genius as transcends all thoughts and imagination. He was an expert in the interpretation of dreams and astrology. These qualities he had inherited from his mother.
After his marriage, he took up a job as a researcher at Madras University. He graduated to working as a clerk based on his work in mathematics that he continually upgraded. He was the maths genius who said that “An equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God.” He always had a vision of scrolls of complicated maths unfolding before him.
A journal editor M.T. Narayana Iyengar has written that Mr Ramanujan’s methods and presentation was terse and lacked precision and clearness. An ordinary person could hardly follow him. In England, he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts by Research degree.
In the year 1994, he died due to Tuberculosis and left the world. In the words of Hardy, Ramanujan had produced groundbreaking theorems and defeated him many times. He had never seen such theories in his life before. One of his famous quotes, “An equation means nothing to me unless it expresses a thought of God” still lingers in our memories and thoughts.
Even after his death, his contributions were important, especially when a lost notebook of his was found more than 50 years after his death, in 1976. Though he had almost no formal training in pure mathematics, his substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions will always be remembered. His theories are still alive in a lot of people’s brains and in school textbooks.
(The author hails from Jodhpur Tekra, Ahmedabad)
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