Dr Raj Shree Dhar
An equation means nothing to me unless it expresses a thought of God completely self-made.
Srinivasa Ramanujan
The seeds from Ramanujan’s garden have been blowing on the wind and have been sprouting all over the landscape. Today, 22nd Dec. marks the birth anniversary of a man who gave himself for the development of mathematics which formed a base for almost all the theories that followed. Srinivasa Ramanujan was the strangest man in all of mathematics, probably in the entire history of science. He has been compared to a bursting supernova, illuminating the darkest, most profound corners of mathematics, before being tragically struck down by tuberculosis at the age of 32…
Srinivasa Ramanujan (22 Dec., 1887- 26 April, 1920) was an Indian mathematician who made extraordinary contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions. He saw the relationship between GOD, ZERO & INFINITY as he was trying to comprehend the infinite reality around him and pointed out that existence of a human life is nothing but a zero. He was born on Thursday into a poor Brahmin family at the residence of his maternal grandparents in Erode, Madras. His father K. Srinivasa Iyenger worked as a clerk in a sari shop and his mother Komalatammal was a housewife and used to sing in a temple. They lived in Sarangapani in a traditional home in the town of Kumbakonam which is now a museum. He died at the young age of 32 in Kumbakonam due to Tuberculosis.
Since Ramanujan’s father was at work most of the day, his mother took care of him as a child. He had a close relationship with her. From her, he learned about tradition and Purana. He learned to sing religious songs, to attend Puja at the temple and particular eating habits – all of which are part of Brahmin culture. At the Kangeyan Primary School, Ramanujan performed well. Just before the age of 10, in November 1897, he passed his primary examinations in English, Tamil, Geography and Arithmetic. With his scores, he stood first in the district. That year, Ramanujan entered Town Higher Secondary School where he encountered formal mathematics for the first time.
When he graduated from Town Higher Secondary School in 1904, Ramanujan was awarded the K. Ranganatha Rao prize for mathematics by the school’s headmaster, Krishnaswami Iyer. Iyer introduced Ramanujan as an outstanding student who deserved scores higher than the maximum possible marks. He received a scholarship to study at Government Arts College, Kumbakonam. However, Ramanujan was so intent on studying mathematics that he could not focus on any other subjects and failed most of them, losing his scholarship in the process. In August 1905, he ran away from home, heading towards Visakhapatnam and stayed in Rajahmundry for about a month. He later enrolled at Pachaiyappa’s College in Madras. He again excelled in mathematics but performed poorly in other subjects. Ramanujan failed his First Arts exam in December 1906 and again a year later. Without a degree, he left college and continued to pursue independent research in mathematics. At this point in his life, he lived in extreme poverty and was often on the brink of starvation.
On 8th February 1913, Mathematician Hardy wrote a letter to Ramanujan, expressing his interest for his work. Hardy also added that it was “essential that I should see proofs of some of your assertions”. Before his letter arrived in Madras during the third week of February, Hardy contacted the Indian Office to plan for Ramanujan’s trip to Cambridge. Secretary Arthur Davies of the Advisory Committee for Indian Students met with Ramanujan to discuss the overseas trip. In accordance with his Brahmin upbringing, Ramanujan refused to leave his country to “go to a foreign land”. Meanwhile, Ramanujan sent a letter packed with theorems to Hardy, writing, “I have found a friend in you who views my labour sympathetically.”
Hardy’s correspondence with Ramanujan soured after Ramanujan refused to come to England. Hardy enlisted a colleague lecturing in Madras, E. H. Neville, to mentor and bring Ramanujan to England. Neville asked Ramanujan why he would not go to Cambridge. Ramanujan apparently had now accepted the proposal; as Neville puts it, “Ramanujan needed no converting and that his parents’ opposition had been withdrawn”. Apparently, Ramanujan’s mother had a vivid dream in which the family Goddess Namagiri commanded her “to stand no longer between her son and the fulfillment of his life’s purpose”. Ramanujan then set sail for England, leaving his wife to stay with his parents in India.
Ramanujan boarded the S.S. Nevasa on 17th March 1914, and at 10 o’clock in the morning, the ship departed from Madras. He arrived in London on 14th April, with E. H. Neville waiting for him with a car. Four days later, Neville took him to his house on Chesterton Road in Cambridge. Ramanujan immediately began his work with the mathematicians Littlewood and Hardy. After six weeks, Ramanujan moved out of Neville’s house and took up residence on Whewell’s Court, just a five-minute walk from Hardy’s room. Hardy and Ramanujan began to take a look at Ramanujan’s notebooks. Hardy had already received 120 theorems from Ramanujan in the first two letters, but there were many more results and theorems to be found in the notebooks. Hardy saw that some were wrong, others had already been discovered, while the rest were new breakthroughs. Ramanujan left a deep impression on Hardy and Littlewood.
Ramanujan was awarded a B.A. degree by research (this degree was later renamed PhD) in March 1916 for his work on highly composite numbers, the first part of which was published as a paper in the Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society. The paper was over 50 pages with different properties of such numbers proven. Hardy remarked that this was one of the most unusual papers seen in mathematical research at that time and that Ramanujan showed extraordinary ingenuity in handling it. On 6 December 1917, he was elected to the London Mathematical Society. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1918, becoming the second Indian to do so, following Ardaseer Cursetjee in 1841, and he was one of the youngest Fellows in the history of the Royal Society. He was elected “for his investigation in Elliptic functions and the Theory of Numbers.”
On 13 October 1918, he became the first Indian to be elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Plagued by health problems throughout his life and living in a country far away from home and obsessively involved with his mathematics, Ramanujan’s health worsened in England, perhaps exacerbated by stress and by the scarcity of vegetarian food during the First World War. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis and a severe vitamin deficiency and was confined to a sanatorium.
Ramanujan returned to Kumbakonam, Madras Presidency in 1919 and died soon thereafter at the age of 32. His widow, S. Janaki Ammal, moved to Mumbai, but returned to Chennai (formerly Madras) in 1950, where she lived until her death in 1994.
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