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A SHORT DESCRIPTION ABOUT RAMANUJAN
Srinivasa Ramanujan [22 December 1887 – 26 April 1920) was an Indian mathematician and autodidact who, with almost no formal training in pure mathematics, made extraordinary contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions. Living in India with no access to the larger mathematical community, which was centred in Europe at the time, Ramanujan developed his own mathematical research in isolation. As a result, he sometimes rediscovered known theorems in addition to producing new work. Ramanujan was said to be a natural genius by the English mathematician G. H. Hardy, in the same league as mathematicians such as Euler and Gauss. He died at the age of 32.

During his short lifetime, Ramanujan independently compiled nearly 3900 results (mostly identities and equations). Nearly all his claims have now been proven correct, although a small number of these results were actually false and some were already known. He stated results that were both original and highly unconventional, such as the Ramanujan prime and the Ramanujan theta function, and these have inspired a vast amount of further research. However, the mathematical mainstream has been rather slow in absorbing some of his major discoveries.[citation needed] The Ramanujan Journal, an international publication, was launched to publish work in all areas of mathematics influenced by his work.

In December 2011, in recognition of his contribution to mathematics, the Government of India declared that Ramanujan's birthday (22 December) should be celebrated every year as National Mathematics Day, and also declared 2012 the National Mathematics Year.

Ramanujan has been described as a person with a somewhat shy and quiet disposition, a dignified man with pleasant manners. He lived a rather Spartan life while at Cambridge. Ramanujan's first Indian biographers describe him as rigorously orthodox. Ramanujan credited his acumen to his family Goddess, Namagiri of Namakkal. He looked to her for inspiration in his work,[84] and claimed to dream of blood drops that symbolised her male consort, Narasimha, after which he would receive visions of scrolls of complex mathematical content unfolding before his eyes. He often said, "An equation for me has no meaning, unless it represents a thought of God."

Hardy cites Ramanujan as remarking that all religions seemed equally true to him. Hardy further argued that Ramanujan's religiousness had been romanticised by Westerners and overstated—in reference to his belief, not practice—by Indian biographers. At the same time, he remarked on Ramanujan's strict observance of vegetarianism.


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