Mediyaan YuvaSrinivasa Ramanujan: A self-taught Mathematician
Some people attain greatness at a very young age. Some people get recognition after they become old. Some eccentric brilliant minds take ages before their thoughts and postulates gets decoded by people four or five generations after them.
Few people have walked on this earth who have broken the stereotype of academic education is equivalent to intelligence.
Some special men have left hallmark of their greatness by being unique and different from other contemporary beings.
In 2001, a movie was made on the great American mathematician and a Noble laureate, john forbes Nash Jr. titled “A beautiful Mind”
In 2014, another movie was made on great British mathematician, Alan Turing titled “Imitation Game”
But in 2015, another movie was released, a movie that should be more dearer to us, than the aforementioned ones, about a great mathematical genius of all time, titled “A man who knew infinity” made on the life history of our very own Srinivasa Ramanujam.
Great men tend to share similarities, if one cares to look closely. Bhagavathpada Adishankara, Swami Vivekananda, Subramaniam Bharathi and Srinivasa Ramanujam, lived for a very short span of time on this world, but the impact that they left behind through their work will remain to touch human lives for times to come.
Persistence under penury can be a characteristics of people who strive to attain perfection in their area of profession. Srinivasa Ramanujam should be hailed as a “mathemagician” who was not recognized during his lifetime for want of western accolades to be considered in the league of extraordinary gentlemen in the field of Mathematics.
He is considered to be a mathematician par excellence only to be compared with greats like Euler and Jacobi. For all his informal education, he became the first Indian to elected a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge and only the second Indian member. He also became one of the youngest fellow of Royals society.
Just mere comments about “Simple Properties” and “Simple Outputs” seem to be profound. He individually compiled an astounding 3900 results such as Ramanujan Prime, Ramanujan theta functions and mock theta functions, most of his postulates or hypothesis are now found correct almost after a century of his existence. He credited his findings to the divine intervention that didn’t allow him to stop himself from expressing his ideas even though it didn’t find any takers during those days.
The famous Ramanuja number 1729, now fondly known as “taxicab number” is defined as the smallest integer that can be expressed as sum of two positive integer cubes in n distinct ways. Its also known as Hardy-Ramanuja number because when hardy visited Ramanuja in Putney when Ramanuja was taken ill, he quoted the number and states that hope it doesn’t bring bad omen for Ramanuja for which Ramanuja quipped that it is a very interesting number and proposed the postulate of taxicab number.
State of TN celebrates Ramanuja’s birthday as “State IT day” . International Centre for theoretical Physics have constituted an award in Ramanuja’s name for young mathematicians from developing countries in co-operation with the international Mathematical Union, Which nominates members of the prize committee.
He lived as if the only objective of his life was mathematics. He was selfless, sometime he can be considered as naive on his relationship with Hardy, he allowed Hardy to walk away with the credit, just because he never put his effort to win awards or accolades. till he left this world, it is considered that he kept writing notes on theorems. His passion for mathematics is unmatched so is his resolve to follow strict vegetarianism according to his tradition.
It would be an understatement to say that Srinivasa Ramanujam was neither understood by his contemporaries nor by the generations followed. His pass time, work time even his lifetime can be described in one word, Mathematics! Any other normal human being might have lost their mind, if they were this much obsessed or dedicated to one subject or object, but not Srinivasa Ramanujam! He was an enigma! He credited his prowess to his family Goddess Namagiri Thayar of Namakkal.
He was unconventional, he ensured all the bare minimum for his existence was taken care of through whatever means available to him, so that he can continue his focus on mathematics. When other mortals would have scared for their life if they had failed in their regular academic subjects and thereby losing the scholarship they were bestowed upon, Ramanuja cared a little and kept looking for avenues to explore the subject deeper.
Srinivasa Ramanuja should have been an inspiration for many but he was not brought to limelight for reasons unknown. Today, the world, understands his contribution and it goes beyond pure mathematics. It can be applied to devices and information security, evolution of which started hardly a couple of decades back.
A tribute to Ramanuja would be to accept mathematicians around the world to explore the subject in their own way regardless of their academic achievements for that matter any individual who pursues their subject of interest with right earnest. Public institutions should think beyond regular classroom teachings and provide platform for those who are truly focussed on one subject regardless of their shortcomings in others. An overhaul of the education system around the world, can bring about a change, where present day Ramanujas will get their due during their lifetime.
-Jayakrishnan G