Srinivasa Ramanujan | 22 Dec 2020

Why in News

Every year, Srinivasa Ramanujan’s birth anniversary on December 22 is commemorated as National Mathematics Day.

Key Points

• About Srinivasa Ramanujan:
  • Born on 22^nd December, 1887 in Erode,Tamil Nadu and died on 26^th April 1920 in Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu, India.
  • In 1903 he secured a scholarship to the University of Madras but lost it the following year because he neglected all other subjects in pursuit of mathematics.
  • In 1911 Ramanujan published the first of his papers in the Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society.
  • In 1913 he began a correspondence with the British mathematician Godfrey H. Hardy which led to a special scholarship from the University of Madras and a grant from Trinity College, Cambridge.
  • In 1918 he was elected to the Royal Society of London.
  • Ramanujan was one of the youngest members of Britain's Royal Society and the first Indian to be elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge University.
• Contributions to Mathematics:
  
  • Formulas and Equations:
    
    • Ramanujan compiled around 3,900 results consisting of equations and identities. One of his most treasured findings was his infinite series for Pi.
    • He gave several formulas to calculate the digits of Pi in many unconventional ways.
  • Game Theory:
    
    • He discovered a long list of new ideas to solve many challenging mathematical problems, which gave a significant impetus to the development of game theory.
    • His contribution to game theory is purely based on intuition and natural talent and remains unrivalled to this day.
  • Ramanujan’s Book:
    
    • One of Ramanujan’s notebooks was discovered by George Andrews in 1976 in the library at Trinity College. Later the contents of this notebook were published as a book.
  • Ramanujan number:
    
    • 1729 is known as the Ramanujan number.
    • It is the smallest number which can be expressed as the sum of two different cubes in two different ways.
      
      • 1729 is the sum of the cubes of 10 and 9 - cube of 10 is 1000 and cube of 9 is 729 adding the two numbers results in 1729.
      • 1729 is also the sum of the cubes of 12 and 1, cube of 12 is 1728 and cube of 1 is 1 adding the two results in 1729.
  • Other Contributions: Ramanujan’s other notable contributions include hypergeometric series, the Riemann series, the elliptic integrals, mock theta function, the theory of divergent series, and the functional equations of the zeta function.

Source:TOI