Page 37 - Ramanujan Yatra

Ramanujan
YATRA
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some three decades ago to produce the most elegantly awe-inspiring tale of the last century, ‘The Man Who Knew Infinity’. His book, now converted into a Hollywood movie, a psycho-analytic dual biography of Ramanujan and G.H. Hardy, in its pursuit of capturing the quintessential Ramanujan through the odyssey of his romantic sojourn, has won many accolades since its publication and made the author a distinguished international celebrity. Kanigel’s magnum opus is a biography that not only did justice to the phenomenal yet tragically short life of this genius but also laid before the common reader an informed sketch of his stupendously huge mathematical oeuvre that he had left as a legacy for the generations to come.
When Government of India declared 2012 as the National Mathematics Year to commemorate Ramanujan’s 125th birth anniversary, the organizing committee formed for a year-long celebration, along with many other mathematical activities throughout India, also took up the project of getting Kanigel’s book translated into ten regional Indian languages under the auspices of Ramanujan Mathematical Society (RMS). The first one to come out was in Bangla (named Ontoheener Antarzami). It was published jointly by RMS and National Book Trust, India, and was formally inaugurated on 19th July 2013 at Kolkata, by the Nobel Laureate economist, Bharat Ratna, Professor Amartya Sen, who was once a Master of Trinity College, of which Ramanujan was the first Indian Fellow. Within a month, the Malayalam translation was released by the Chief Minister of Kerala. The Tamil and the Kannada translations were published on 22nd December 2013, the auspicious birthday of Ramanujan, now celebrated as the National Mathematics Day in India. Translations in Odia, Marathi and Gujarati followed gradually.
However, with the passage of time, the information related to Ramanujan, as one may find in Kanigel’s well-researched book, comprehensive and up-to- date as it was during its time of publication in 1991, appeared to require further updating here and there. This is why, while working on the Bangla translation, efforts were made to shed some light on the recent boom in the mathematical research arena influenced by Ramanujan’s work, as well as some other socio- academic developments related to his name and life that have taken place since then. An addendum was also proposed to this biography of epic proportions, which was duly accepted and appreciated by Robert Kanigel himself and finally got included in the Bangla translation. The original article in English was later published in Mathematics Newsletter of RMS, in December 2013, (vol.24, No.3, pages 63-77).
There have been many notable biographies of Ramanujan written in English after Kanigel, like the one by K. Srinivasa Rao (1998) or by S. Ram (2000). Another one, “The Mathematical Legacy of Srinivasa Ramanujan”