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was published in October, 2012. Written by eminent Ramanujan scholars, M. Ram Murty and V. Kumar Murty, this book has several chapters devoted to Ramanujan’s conjecture and its impact on 20th and 21st century mathematics. Almost at the same time of Kanigel’s book, Wazir Hasan Abdi, a distinguished professor of mathematics and a Fellow of The Indian National Science Academy has written a beautiful book on Ramanujan’s life and work titled “Toils and Triumphs of Srinivasa Ramanujan–The Man and the Mathematician”. Apart from containing almost all the information on Ramanujan’s life that one may get in Kanigel’s book, it includes all the contribution that Ramanujan made to the Journal of Indian Mathematical Society before his voyage to Cambridge. Furthermore, in the last section there is a collection of six survey articles written by experts on various areas of Ramanujan’s mathematical work. Subsequently, Bruce C. Berndt and Robert A. Rankin have published two wonderful books. The first one, titled Ramanujan–Letters and Commentary, published in 1995 by AMS (Indian edition by Affiliated East West Press Private Limited, 1997) has collected several letters written to, from and about Ramanujan and makes detailed commentaries on the letters. The second book, titled Ramanujan - Essays and Surveys, published in 2001 by AMS-LMS (Indian edition by Hindusthan Book Agency, 2003) is a collection of excellent articles by various experts on Ramanujan’s life and work. While writing a review of the Indian edition of the second book in volume 87 of Current Science in 2004, Professor M.S. Raghunathan remarked that “our curiosity about the great is by no means confined to their lofty pursuits and achievements (perhaps because it is their common place experiences that will reassure us of our kinship with them). And in the case of Srinivasa Ramanujan, that curiosity is greater as the bare outlines of his life have so much of the romantic element. The excellent biography of Ramanujan by Robert Kanigel.... is indeed a comprehensive work; yet there remain many unanswered questions.” Highlighting some such issues he further writes, “A note by Berndt tells us that the original notebooks are to be found in the Librarian’s office of the University of Madras..... We owe the publications of The Notebooks to the initiative of K. Chandrasekharan, one of our leading mathematicians–a fact that unfortunately finds no mention in much of the extensive writings about Ramanujan.” Part three of this book has a short biography of Janakiammal, Ramanujan’s wife, who passed away on April 13, 1994 at the age of 94. An interview given by her to Pritish Nandy has been reproduced in the book, which reveals some glimpses of her personality. Second Part of the book contains information regarding Ramanujan’s illness and treatment. An article by Rankin reproduced here from the Proceedings of the Indian Academy of Sciences and another by a physician, D. A. B. Young, who did some investigations on this subject for the Royal Society, have considerable information not to be found in Kanigel’s book. Raghunathan pointed out that, “among other things, it appears that the contemporary diagnosis of Ramanujan’s illness was not satisfactory”.
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