Srinivasa Ramanujan

Srinivasa Aiyangar Ramanujan (Tamil: ஸ்ரீனிவாஸ ஐயங்கார் ராமானுஜன்) (December 22, 1887 – April 26, 1920) was a groundbreaking Indian mathematician. A child prodigy, he was largely self-taught in mathematics. Ramanujan is considered one of the world's greatest-ever mathematicians, proving over 3,000 theorems. Ramanujan mainly worked in analytical number theory and is famous for many summation formulas involving constants such as π, prime numbers and the partition function. Often, his formulae were stated without proof and were only later proven to be true. His results inspired a large amount of later research and mathematical papers. In 1997 the Ramanujan Journal was launched to publish work "in areas of mathematics influenced by Ramanujan".

Quotes

• "Almost a century after his death, it was said of him, "Ramanujan was a mathematician so great that his name transcends jealousies, the one superlatively great mathematician whom India has produced in the last thousand years. His leaps of intuition confound mathematicians even today, seven decades after his death. His papers are still plumbed for their secrets. His theorems are being applied in areas scarcely imaginable during his lifetime." (quoted from Kanigel's biography, "The Man who knew Infinity", p.3)