Mathematician Ramanujan (রামানুজান) Biographical Book

Srinivasa Ramanujan (শ্রীনিবাস রামানুজান) was one of India's greatest mathematical geniuses. He had almost no formal training in pure mathematics. Still he made many contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions, including solutions to mathematical problems considered to be unsolvable.

He was born in the year 1887 during the british rule in India. When he was nearly five years old, Ramanujan entered the primary school in Kumbakonam. At the high school, Ramanujan was to do well in all his school subjects and showed himself an able all round scholar.

In 1900 he began to work on his own on mathematics summing geometric and arithmetic series. Ramanujan was shown how to solve cubic equations in 1902 and he went on to find his own method to solve the quartic.

Ramanujan came across a mathematics book by G S Carr called Synopsis of elementary results in pure mathematics. This book, with its very concise style, allowed Ramanujan to teach himself mathematics.

In 1913, he began a postal partnership with the English mathematician G. H. Hardy at the University of Cambridge, England. Recognizing the extraordinary work sent to him as samples, Hardy arranged travel for Ramanujan to Cambridge. In his notes, Ramanujan had produced groundbreaking new theorems, including some that Hardy stated had "defeated him and his colleagues completely", in addition to rediscovering recently proven but highly advanced results.

During his short life, Ramanujan discovered nearly 3,900 results. The Ramanujan prime, the Ramanujan theta function, partition formulae, and mock theta functions, have opened entire new areas of work and inspired a vast amount of further research. Nearly all his claims have now been proven correct.

He became ill and died only at the age 32.