Ramanujan DYK

Link: https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/gk-current-affairs/story/srinivasa-ramanujan-life-
story-973662-2017-04-26
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2018.0440
https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/ramanujans-legacy-used-in-signal-processing-black-
hole-physics/article30367891.ece

1. Intro slide:
The man who knew infinity!! (from the movie) or the prodigy who fathomed divine and divide

2. Srinivasa Ramanujan had his interest in mathematics unlocked by a book he loaned

when he was 15 years old. It consists solely of thousands of theorems, many presented
without proofs which encouraged Ramanujan to conduct research on his own.

3. At London G.H. Hardy made a remark that the number of the taxi he came in (1729)
looks like a boring number. Ramanujan replied "Oh No, actually it is a very interesting
number.

4. It is the smallest natural number representable in two different ways as the sum of two
cubes". The number 1729 thus came to be known as Hardy- Ramanujan number.

5. Because paper was expensive, poor Ramanujan often used to derive his results on a
'slate' and sometimes on the floor of the temple to jot down results of his derivations.

6. Ramanujan frequently said, "An equation for me has no meaning, unless it represents a
thought of God." He said that during meditation and in his dreams, the Goddess
Namagiri Thayar would manifest, and then scrolls of intricate mathematical calculations
would unfurl in front of his eyes.

7. Ramanujan's work has influenced many areas of mathematics like q-series, the growth
of coefficients of modular forms and on mock modular forms. It has also influenced
intricate concepts of physics like string theory, counting of black hole states and
moonshine.

8. There is a museum dedicated to recounting the life story of Ramanujan.

The museum, which is located in Chennai, contains several images of Ramanujan’s
works, house and family members, as well as letters from his friends.

9. His birthday, 22nd December, is celebrated as the National Mathematics Day and he
even has a prime number series named after him-the Ramanujan Prime. He is a
metaphor for young Indian students who want to break free from intellectual captivity and
fly like Ramanujan!