Page 25 - Ramanujan Yatra

Ramanujan
YATRA
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problems but also in issues related to the basic needs of human being and the growing needs of our society. It is universally accepted that all the disciplines, including the natural science, have developed on the lap of Mathematics. Many of the Ramanujan’s innovative theorems find applications in the biological sciences too as it is in Physics and Mathematics.
Ramanujan has helped the humankind make a giant leap by thinking extraordinarily and contributing thousands of theorems which have much wider application than he had imagined. One of the famous and greatest mathematical minds of his time, G.H. Hardy, who was in Cambridge University, London, reading the mathematical communications of Ramanujan, recognized his knowledge and spirit in Mathematics. He also noticed Ramanujan’s struggle for livelihood in India and encouraged him by arranging a scholarship from Madras University and a major grant for his research from Cambridge University. It was Ramanujan’s graciousness and humanness that he donated part of his scholarship to the economically weaker children for their studies, sparing little amount for his study and livelihood.
Hardy was astonished to notice the brilliance of Ramanujan. He arranged for his study in Cambridge and invited him in the year 1914 to start one of the most fascinating collaborations in the history of mathematics. Though Ramanujan’s orthodox mother, wife and family members were hesitant to his visit to London, his interest, commitment and determination to achieve something in life inspired him to take a tough decision and honour the invitation of Hardy and reach Cambridge. Ramanujan and Hardy worked together for five years until the last day of Ramanujan’s stay in London. This complementary pair worked intensively and developed many concepts and published them as a blueprint for Mathematics to advance further. During the five years of their companionship at Cambridge, Hardy provided the formal framework in which Ramanujan’s innate grasp of numbers could thrive, and Ramanujan published upwards of 20 papers on his own and 17 in collaboration with Hardy.
Ramanujan, who discontinued his study in Government Arts College at Kumbakonam and later in the University of Madras losing the scholarship for his poor performance in subjects other than mathematics, received a degree in Bachelor of Science in Research at the prestigious Cambridge University in 1916. When he arrived in England he knew nothing of modern mathematics. He made mistakes initially but quickly learned a great deal of formal mathematics at Cambridge and went from an amateur to writing great research papers in mathematics. One of these papers, written with Hardy, astonished the mathematical community as it gave a way to reliably calculate numbers that had eluded mathematicians for centuries – partition numbers.