Essay on Srinivas Ramanujam
Introduction
Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920) was one of India’s greatest mathematical figures. He was a child prodigy, with a natural instinct for mathematics. As though he could see how everything comes together. He was particularly interested in modular functions and number theory.
This essay is divided into two sections. In the first section I will report on Ramanujan’s life. I have decided to take a unique approach, and instead of reporting solely based on biographies (and biographies about Ramanujan are a-plenty) I will be analyzing letters he wrote. These letters have been stored in the National Archives in Delhi, the Archives of the State of Tamil Nadu, and in collections of various mathematicians with whom Ramanujan corresponded. They were compiled by Bruce Berndt and Robert Rankin in their book Ramanujan, Letters and Commentary. I believe these letters will give me a “first source” not only pertaining to Ramanujan’s life but also a more profound view of his thoughts, his personality. The letters are my main source for this essay, however I do use a couple of good biographies to enhance the information I got from the letters and to fill in some gaps. And while in this biographic section I will survey some of Ramanujan’s mathematical ideas, I will not go very deep into them. This I will do in the second section in which I will focus on a few of Ramanujan’s mathematical ideas. In the last section, I will use Mathematica to compute and verify some of Ramanujan’s theorems from the second section.
Ramanujan’s Life
Ramanujan was born on the 22nd of December, 1887 in his Maternal grandmother’s house in Erode. Erode is a small town approximately 250 miles south west of Madras (see map). At the age of 1, Ramanujan’s mother took him to her home in Kumakonam (160 miles from Madras) where her husband, Kuppuswamy Srinivasa Ayingar was a clerk in a cloth merchant shop. Ramanujan inherited his first name, “Srinivasa” from his father.1 I was curious as to what
Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920) was one of India’s greatest mathematical figures. He was a child prodigy, with a natural instinct for mathematics. As though he could see how everything comes together. He was particularly interested in modular functions and number theory.
This essay is divided into two sections. In the first section I will report on Ramanujan’s life. I have decided to take a unique approach, and instead of reporting solely based on biographies (and biographies about Ramanujan are a-plenty) I will be analyzing letters he wrote. These letters have been stored in the National Archives in Delhi, the Archives of the State of Tamil Nadu, and in collections of various mathematicians with whom Ramanujan corresponded. They were compiled by Bruce Berndt and Robert Rankin in their book Ramanujan, Letters and Commentary. I believe these letters will give me a “first source” not only pertaining to Ramanujan’s life but also a more profound view of his thoughts, his personality. The letters are my main source for this essay, however I do use a couple of good biographies to enhance the information I got from the letters and to fill in some gaps. And while in this biographic section I will survey some of Ramanujan’s mathematical ideas, I will not go very deep into them. This I will do in the second section in which I will focus on a few of Ramanujan’s mathematical ideas. In the last section, I will use Mathematica to compute and verify some of Ramanujan’s theorems from the second section.
Ramanujan’s Life
Ramanujan was born on the 22nd of December, 1887 in his Maternal grandmother’s house in Erode. Erode is a small town approximately 250 miles south west of Madras (see map). At the age of 1, Ramanujan’s mother took him to her home in Kumakonam (160 miles from Madras) where her husband, Kuppuswamy Srinivasa Ayingar was a clerk in a cloth merchant shop. Ramanujan inherited his first name, “Srinivasa” from his father.1 I was curious as to what