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I want to talk about a favorite mathematician of mine this time. His name is Srinivasa Ramanujan. He was born in 1887 in a town called Erode in Southern India. He died at a young age of 32. But in that short span of his life, he did remarkable work in Mathematics. Great mathematicians like Hardy place him in the league of Euler and Gauss. He focused so much on math that he ignored all other subjects and the result was his expulsion from the college. He proceeded his research on his own without any training at a major university while working as a clerk at a shipping company.
Since he did his work in isolation, he did not know that many of his research were already done by other mathematicians. He wrote a letter to Hardy claiming the ownership of what was known to mathematicians at that time as Laplace's theorem. Hardy was amused by this but he noted the approach was distinct. Furthermore Ramanujan added few other stuffs in that letter which were sufficient enough to intrigue Hardy. He invited Ramanujan to England to work at Cambridge University.
Hardy worked with Ramanujan to build eloquent proofs of Ramanujan's work in other word Hardy introduced him to the concept of what mathematicians call rigor. This is where Ramanujan's work on mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions started to reach rest of the world.
England's cold weather took a toll on his health. He returned to India because he did not want to die in England. On his death bed, he grabbed a notebook and wrote 17 new functions of mock modular forms. He died before he could produce the rigor to support his work. It took 90 years for mathematicians to solve his functions. But now, all his functions are accepted to be true.
In the days of Ramanujan, there was not much use for his work because he mostly dealt with numbers approaching infinity. But now a days his mock modular forms help physicists compute the entropy, or level of disorder of black holes.
He was by far the greatest mathematician of the 20th century and this century has yet to produce someone like him.
I also wanted to mention two great American mathematicians Bruce Berndt and Ken Ono who worked to prove that Ramanujan's functions on mock modular forms were correct.
If you want to find out more about him then read a very entertaining book called The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius by Robert Kanigel. It is a very entertaining book and you do not have to be mathematician to enjoy it.
Let me give you a very simple anecdote by Hardy to illustrate his genius:
I remember once going to see him when he was ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavorable omen. "No," he replied, "it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways."
The two different ways are
1729 = 13 + 123 = 93 + 103.
Mathematicians have generalized this idea to create the notion what is known as taxicab numbers.
I am posting a few links for you below in case you are curious to know more about him.
Researchers Unlock Formula By Mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan - Business Insider
Srinivasa Ramanujan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[ame=http://www.amazon.com/The-Man-Who-Knew-Infinity/dp/0671750615]The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan: Robert Kanigel: 9780671750619: Amazon.com: Books[/ame]
Since he did his work in isolation, he did not know that many of his research were already done by other mathematicians. He wrote a letter to Hardy claiming the ownership of what was known to mathematicians at that time as Laplace's theorem. Hardy was amused by this but he noted the approach was distinct. Furthermore Ramanujan added few other stuffs in that letter which were sufficient enough to intrigue Hardy. He invited Ramanujan to England to work at Cambridge University.
Hardy worked with Ramanujan to build eloquent proofs of Ramanujan's work in other word Hardy introduced him to the concept of what mathematicians call rigor. This is where Ramanujan's work on mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions started to reach rest of the world.
England's cold weather took a toll on his health. He returned to India because he did not want to die in England. On his death bed, he grabbed a notebook and wrote 17 new functions of mock modular forms. He died before he could produce the rigor to support his work. It took 90 years for mathematicians to solve his functions. But now, all his functions are accepted to be true.
In the days of Ramanujan, there was not much use for his work because he mostly dealt with numbers approaching infinity. But now a days his mock modular forms help physicists compute the entropy, or level of disorder of black holes.
He was by far the greatest mathematician of the 20th century and this century has yet to produce someone like him.
I also wanted to mention two great American mathematicians Bruce Berndt and Ken Ono who worked to prove that Ramanujan's functions on mock modular forms were correct.
If you want to find out more about him then read a very entertaining book called The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius by Robert Kanigel. It is a very entertaining book and you do not have to be mathematician to enjoy it.
Let me give you a very simple anecdote by Hardy to illustrate his genius:
I remember once going to see him when he was ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavorable omen. "No," he replied, "it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways."
The two different ways are
1729 = 13 + 123 = 93 + 103.
Mathematicians have generalized this idea to create the notion what is known as taxicab numbers.
I am posting a few links for you below in case you are curious to know more about him.
Researchers Unlock Formula By Mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan - Business Insider
Srinivasa Ramanujan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[ame=http://www.amazon.com/The-Man-Who-Knew-Infinity/dp/0671750615]The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan: Robert Kanigel: 9780671750619: Amazon.com: Books[/ame]
The more the better. White, black, yellow and red.
