MQ10 VIC ch 01 Page 9 Tuesday, November 20, 2001 10:49 AM
Chapter 1 Rational and irrational numbers
History of mathematics
S R I N I VA S A R A M A N U J A N ( 1 8 8 7 – 1 9 2 0 )
During his life . . .
The Sherlock Holmes stories are written.
X-rays are discovered.
The Wright brothers build their aircraft.
World War I is fought.
Srinivasa Ramanujan was an Indian
mathematician. He was born in Madras into
a very poor family. Although he was a self-
taught mathematical genius, Ramanujan
failed to graduate from college and the best
job he could find was as a clerk. Fortunately
some of the people he worked with noticed
his amazing abilities — he had discovered
9
more than 100 theorems including results
on elliptic integrals and analytic number
theory.
Ramanujan was persuaded to send his
theorems to Cambridge University in
England for evaluation. Godfrey Hardy, a
fellow of Trinity College who assessed the
work, was very impressed. He organised a
scholarship that enabled Ramanujan to
come to Cambridge in 1914. The notebooks
which Ramanujan brought with him to
Cambridge displayed an obvious lack of
formal training in mathematics and showed
that he was unaware of many of the findings
of other mathematicians. Remarkably he
seemed to achieve many of his results by
intuition.
While at Cambridge, Ramamujan
published many papers, some in conjunction
with Godfrey Hardy. He worked in several
areas of mathematics including number
theory, elliptic functions, continued fractions
and prime numbers. Palindromes were also of
interest to him. A palindrome reads the same
backwards as forwards, such as 12321 or
abcba. He was elected a fellow of Trinity in
1918 but poor health forced him to return to
India. Ramanujan died of tuberculosis at the
age of 32.
Questions
1. What had Ramanujan discovered
before he went to Cambridge?
2. Name four areas of mathematics that
Ramanujan worked in.
3. How old was he when he died?
4. Challenge: Ramanujan found a formula
for π as below. Use a calculator or
computer to see what value you get
for this irrational number.
∞
1 8 ( 4n )! ( 1103 + 26 390n )
--- = ------------ ∑ -------------------------------------------------------
-
π 9801 n = 0 ( n! ) 4 ( 396 4n )