Shakespeare in his Macbeth, compared life to a character in an ill written play whose voice is heard for sometime and then it wanes away. Still, a few stands out against the test of time because of their work.
Srinivasa Ramanujan, needs no introduction to Indians or to the Mathematical world. But his work has not been popularized so much in my opinion. Magic squares is the first title of his Notebook1 where he gives some formulas in constructing various types of magic squares. This was written at his initial years and can be understood by all. From the second chapter onwards,which is on harmonic function, one can realize the complexity and the elegance his results.In the subsequent chapters he provides various results covering different areas of math. Bell Numbers, Bernoulli numbers, Infinite series, q series, Theta functions,modular functions, the list goes on and on.
Notebook 4 contains his algebraic work, where Ramanujan worked on finding solutions quartic equations, equations of higher (like 7th,8th) order in particular forms, diophantine equations of particular forms etc. The story goes,when Hardy told (when he visited ailing Ramanujan) that his taxi cab number 1729 was a dull number, Ramanujan responded that it is an interesting number as it would be the minimal (positive) integer number that can be written as a sum of two cubes in two different ways . (1 cube + 12 cube, 10 cube + 9 cube) . It could be one of the results of diophantine equations he worked on.
His approximation to pi was one of the fastest converging series(Pi). His factorial approximation was more accurate than widely used Stirling approximation(Factorial).There are researches showing that his numerical root finding algorithm is a generalization of other algorithms (Ref).He and Hardy together developed formulas on number partition theory.Just before 3 months before his death in 1920, Ramanujan discovered new type functions called mock modular functions .After 90 years its usefulness became clear to the world (Ref).
3900+ mathematical identities, within his short lifespan of 32 years in his 5 notebooks, which were discovered by him with less formal education and as a result of self learning makes Ramanujan a true legend.
Since his 125th birthday in 2012 , India celebrates his birthday (Dec 22) as National Mathematics day.
Srinivasa Ramanujan, needs no introduction to Indians or to the Mathematical world. But his work has not been popularized so much in my opinion. Magic squares is the first title of his Notebook1 where he gives some formulas in constructing various types of magic squares. This was written at his initial years and can be understood by all. From the second chapter onwards,which is on harmonic function, one can realize the complexity and the elegance his results.In the subsequent chapters he provides various results covering different areas of math. Bell Numbers, Bernoulli numbers, Infinite series, q series, Theta functions,modular functions, the list goes on and on.
Notebook 4 contains his algebraic work, where Ramanujan worked on finding solutions quartic equations, equations of higher (like 7th,8th) order in particular forms, diophantine equations of particular forms etc. The story goes,when Hardy told (when he visited ailing Ramanujan) that his taxi cab number 1729 was a dull number, Ramanujan responded that it is an interesting number as it would be the minimal (positive) integer number that can be written as a sum of two cubes in two different ways . (1 cube + 12 cube, 10 cube + 9 cube) . It could be one of the results of diophantine equations he worked on.
His approximation to pi was one of the fastest converging series(Pi). His factorial approximation was more accurate than widely used Stirling approximation(Factorial).There are researches showing that his numerical root finding algorithm is a generalization of other algorithms (Ref).He and Hardy together developed formulas on number partition theory.Just before 3 months before his death in 1920, Ramanujan discovered new type functions called mock modular functions .After 90 years its usefulness became clear to the world (Ref).
3900+ mathematical identities, within his short lifespan of 32 years in his 5 notebooks, which were discovered by him with less formal education and as a result of self learning makes Ramanujan a true legend.
Since his 125th birthday in 2012 , India celebrates his birthday (Dec 22) as National Mathematics day.
