Page 57 - Ramanujan Yatra

Born to Komalatammal and K. Srinivasa Iyengar in an orthodox, poor and ordinarily educated Tamil Brahmin family at Erode, Madras
Got admitted to Gangayan Primary School, Kumbakonam
Stood First in the district and joined Town High School, Kumbakonam
Passed Matriculation in 2nd class and Joined Government College, Kumbakonam; came in touch with A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics, a mere compendium of formulas by G. S. Carr; began to write his own results in a NOTEBOOK
Failed in College final Examination except in Mathematics, lost his scholarship, ran away from home; came back after about a month.
Joined Pacchaiyappa’s College, Madras, but discontinued after 3 months due to ill health
Appeared privately and failed in F.A. [First Arts, the entrance examination for University education]; started reorganizing and rewriting his NOTEBOOKS in formal manner
Mother got him married to Janakiammal [9 years of age]
Published his first Paper (Jour. Ind. Math. Soc.) [Some Properties of Bernoulli’s Numbers]
Got a job at Madras Port Trust as a clerk upon recommendation from Ramachandra Rao
Wrote a nine page letter packed with some of his own formulas to G. H. Hardy at Trinity College, Cambridge and eventually got an invitation to come over with full scholarship
Due to E.H. Neville’s sincere effort, finally sailed to England overcoming the social taboo of a devout Brahmin
Received B.A. (by Research on Highly Composite Numbers) from Cambridge University; worked on Approximate Number of Prime Factors for Large Integer n and Asymptotic formulae in Combinatory Analysis [both later published in the Proc. Lond. Math. Soc.]
Recurrent illness and hospitalization, high fever, pain in stomach, diagnosed finally as (the then incurable) Tuberculosis by more than one specialists; seminal collaboration with G H Hardy On Number of Partitions of a Natural Number n
Out of frustration, attempted suicide at a London underground rail station
Elected as (Second Indian) FRS [Fellow of Royal Society] and then subsequently as (First Indian) Fellow of Trinity College; illness continued
Arrived back in India, with illness, at the end of First World War. His results on Congruence Properties of Partitions and Algebraic relations between certain infinite products were presented on this day to Lond. Math. Soc. by G.H. Hardy
Wrote his Last letter to Hardy describing Mock Theta Functions through 22 examples
Died at Madras [at the age of 32 years]; left his three Notebooks with about 3542 theorems, without proof; almost each one was later proved by Bruce C. Berndt through his 20 years of relentless research amounting to five volume of books from Springer
Pierre Deligne proved Tau Conjecture posed by Ramanujan in his 1916 paper On Certain Arithmetical Functions and was lauded with the Fields Medal
George Andrews rediscovered in the Wren Library of Cambridge, the so-called Lost Notebook: 138 sides of loose handwritten pages containing over 600 formulas related mostly to Mock Theta Functions and Modular Equations, listed without any proof as always, conjured by Ramanujan during his last days in India despite his terminal illness.
Dr. Parthasarathi Mukhopadhyay
22 December 1887
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