National Mathematics Day is observed on the birth anniversary of great Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, every year. Globally referred to as “the man who knew Infinity”,
Ramanujan was born in the year 1887 to a Tamil Brahmin Iyengar family at Erode, Tamil Nadu.
The statement “the man who knew Infinity” literally indicates that Ramanujan was such a natural genius that if he had lived forever, his contributions to mathematics would have
been infinite. He showed the signs of a developing genius at a young age, and his contributions to fractions, infinite series, number theory, mathematical analysis, and other areas set a precedent in mathematics.
"He knew infinity" denotes that his thoughts were unlimited, that his contributions benefited a wide range of subjects and that he was a man of infinite intelligence.
Here are some interesting facts about the great mathematician-
- Ramanujan was a self-taught mathematician who 'developed' the subject and became one of India's greatest mathematical geniuses in the process.
- Ramanujan taught himself trigonometry when he was 12 years old. He was an expert in this field of mathematics, and he created numerous theorems.
- In mathematics, he was regarded as a prodigy, but the same cannot be said of his abilities in other subjects. Ramanujan excelled in mathematics and conducted independent research.
- At the age of 14, he ran away from home and enrolled in a Madras (now Chennai) college, where he excelled only in mathematics and even failed his First Arts exam.
- Ramanujan got a copy of George Shoobridge Carr's Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics when he was 15 years old. His main source of inspiration and knowledge was this book.
- Ramanujan grew up in such poverty that he could never afford to buy paper for his notes. Instead of using papers, he calculated on slates.
- Ramanujan contributed over 3,500 equations and formulae to the field of mathematics. The Riemann series, Divergent Series Theory, elliptic integrals, and Hypergeometric series are some of his most notable contributions.
- Ramanujan left behind three notebooks and a slew of papers with summaries and results, but with little to no proof. Mathematicians are still working on the unpublished results of Ramanujan's notebooks a century after his death.