Srinivasa Ramanujan

Srinivasa Ramanujan grew up in a small town in Tamil Nadu with almost no advanced maths books, but he taught himself. He filled notebook after notebook with beautiful, strange, wonderful mathematical formulas that no one had seen before.

He worked as a clerk in Madras, and one day he sent his notes to a famous mathematician in England named G. H.

Hardy. Hardy read them and could hardly believe his eyes.

Ramanujan sailed across the ocean to Cambridge, and the world discovered a self-taught genius from India.

Srinivasa Ramanujan was born in 1887 in Erode, Tamil Nadu, and grew up in the town of Kumbakonam. Although his family was poor, he was fascinated by mathematics from childhood.

He worked out his own results in number theory, infinite series, continued fractions and modular forms, sometimes rediscovering known theorems and often finding entirely new ones.

In 1913 he wrote to G. H.

Hardy at Cambridge, whose reply changed his life. In 1914 he sailed to England, and their collaboration produced remarkable results that mathematicians are still studying today.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1918, one of the youngest ever. Sadly, his health broke down and he returned to India in 1919, dying in 1920 at just thirty-two years old.

His so-called 'lost notebook', found decades later, is still generating new mathematics. India celebrates his birthday, 22 December, as National Mathematics Day.