SASTRA Ramanujan Prize 2022

• 06 Oct 2022

Why in News?

The SASTRA Ramanujan Prize for 2022 will be awarded to Yunqing Tang, Assistant Professor with the University of California, Berkeley, U.S.A.

• Ms. Yunqing’s works display a remarkable combination of sophisticated techniques, in which the arithmetic and geometry of modular curves and of Shimura varieties play a central role, and her results and methods are bound to have major impact on future research in this area.

What are the Key Points of the Awards?

• The award was instituted by the Shanmugha Arts, Science, Technology & Research Academy (SASTRA) in 2005.
• A cash prize of USD 10,000 is presented annually to individuals aged 32 and below, who made outstanding contributions in the field of mathematics, influenced by Srinivasa Ramanujan in a broad sense.

Who was Srinivasa Ramanujan?

• About:
  • Ramanujan was born on 22^nd December 1887 in the village Erode (400 km from Chennai, then known as Madras).
  • The famous British mathematician Godfrey Harold Hardy recognised his talent in 1913. He went to Cambridge, on Godfrey Harold Hardy’s invitation.
  • Ramanujam made substantial contributions to the analytical theory of numbers and worked on elliptic functions.
  • He also worked on the partition of the whole number, hypergeometric series and Euler's constant.
  • His papers were published in English and European journals, and in 1918 he was elected to the Royal Society of London.
  • He died on April 26^th, 1920, at the age of 32, just after returning to India after a long illness.
  • In India, 22^nd December is celebrated as National Mathematics Day in the memory of Srinivasa Ramanujan.
• Contributions:
  • 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.

UPSC Civil Services Examination Previous Year Question (PYQ)

Q. A recent movie titled The Man Who Knew Infinity is based on the biography of (2016)

(a) S. Ramanujan
(b) S. Chandrasekhar 
(c) S.N. Bose
(d) C.V. Raman

Ans: (a)

Exp:

• ‘The Man Who Knew Infinity’ is a movie based on the biography of S. Ramanujan (1887-1920), an Indian mathematician, known for his immense contribution in mathematical analysis. He was a fellow of the Royal Society.
• Therefore, option (a) is the correct answer.

Source: TH