Tag: Facts

Ramanujan was a child prodigy and a mathematical genius. Irrespective of having little or no access to having exposure to advanced mathematics, he turned out to be one hell of a genius as a kid! As most child prodigies, if not all, Ramanujan could not survive for long. He died at the age of 33 on April 20, 1920, but even in his short-lived life, he became Mozart of mathematics!

Here are 7 most bizarre and unique facts about the man who found life and romance in the beauty of numbers and theorems!

1. When Ramanujan was thirteen, he could work out Loney’s Trigonometry exercises without any help!

By the age of 13, he had completed advanced trigonometry and discovered complex theorems on his own! Feeling numerically dyslexic already?

2. He never had any friends in school because his peers rarely understood him at school & were always slightly jealous of his mathematical acumen!

It is an obvious fact that being a nerd, it became difficult for Ramanujan to gel with kids of his age. While others were involved in sports, it was math which caught his interest at a tender age.

3. As a young man, he failed to get a degree, as he did not clear his fine arts courses, although he always performed exceptionally well in mathematics.

Who says failure should be the dead-end in a person’s life! This man is an inspiration for many that temporary failure can’t ever decide your future. Don’t let minor disappointments come your way and keep following your passion.

4. Because paper was expensive, poor Ramanujan often used to derive his results on a ‘slate’ to jot down results of his derivations.

After he died, people close to him found a treasure! This treasure was nothing materialistic but something which was, even more, precious! He left behind a ‘notebook’ with merely summaries and results in it, with little or no proofs – his personal notebook.

The first notebook had 351 pages with 16 organised chapters and some unorganized material. The second notebook has 256 pages in 21 chapters and 100 unorganized pages, and his third notebook had 33 unorganized pages. The results in his notebooks inspired numerous papers by mathematicians!

5. G.H. Hardy took Ramanujam with him to England but the English weather didn’t suit him. He also reported of mild racism towards him.

After getting inspired by his book Orders of Infinity, he wrote a letter to famous English mathematician G.H. Hardy (Who later became his mentor) in 1913. After a visit to India, G.H Hardy brought Ramanujam with him to England but the English weather didn’t suit him. Also, being a devout Brahman, this mathematical super-hero had a tough time adjusting with the culture and cuisine.

6. 22nd December is called National Mathematics Day in India because of Ramanujan’s birth-anniversary!

7. After a funny incident, 1729 is called Hardy-Ramanujam number in his honor, and such numbers are called Taxicab numbers.

After moving to England, Ramanujan had a lot of health disorders. A visit to hospital in a taxi resulted in one of the most celebrated anecdotes-

Once, when G.H. Hardy went to the hospital to visit him, he remarked that he had ridden in a taxicab with the number 1729, adding “what a dull number to ride into the hospital”. To which Ramanujam immediately said “No, on the contrary, it is a very interesting number! It is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways”.

He was a pure genius, isn’t it?

via – indiatimes