Created by Ahmad Apriyanto, Novi Handayani, Iis Rosita
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Mathematician’s Name : Srinivasa Ramanujan (shree–ni–VA–sa rah–MAH–nuh–jun)
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Date of Birth : Desember 22nd,
1887
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Place of Birth : Erode, India
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Date of Death : April 26th, 1920
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Place of Death : India
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Three events in the
mathematician’s life – date also if known
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1.
Often winning Mathematics contest since he was child.
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2.
In
1904, he received a merit scholarship in a local college and became more
indulgent into mathematics. He lost his interest in all other subjects due to
which he lost his scholarship. Even
after two attempts, he did not succeed to get a first degree in the field of
arts.
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3. In 1909, he married Srimathi
Janaki and
continued his clerical work and, side by side, his investigations of
mathematics. Moreovere, there was someone who was supported
their life – Ramanchadra Rao. He was often use scrap wrapping paper from his office
to do calculations.
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4. In 1911, he published some
of his results.
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5.
In
January 1913, he
sent his paper
to a Cambridge Professor named Godfrey Hardy
but he did not appreciate Ramanujan’s work much as he had not really done
reached the standard of the mathematicians of the west. But Rahmanujan was given a scholarship
in May by the University of Madras.
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6.
In the same time, Hardy offered Rahmanujan scholarship – all expenses
paid – to study at Trinity College. After some reasons, he moved to England
and sent his wife and his mother to a nearby town. He had to take care of his
personal needs himself in England.
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7.
He had dilemma in choosing the offered scholarship from Hardy or the
scholarship of University of Madras because of his religion – Hindu, he was a
Brahmin caste.
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8.
Ramanujan
went to Cambridge in 1914 and it helped him a lot but by that time his mind
worked on the patterns on which it had worked before and he seldom adopted
new ways. He and
Hardy collaborated on many articles and published in Europan journal.
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9.
He
got elected as the fellow in 1918 at the Trinity College at Cambridge & the Royal Society.
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10.
After 3 years in England, he became sick – a
mysterious ill – and after 6 years in England he decided to go back to India.
A year after, he died because of the ilness.
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Three accomplishments in
mathematics
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1.
He
was
very well known for his efforts on continued fractions and series of
hypergeometry.
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2. When he was thirteen, he could
work out Loney’s Trigonometry exercises without any help.
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3. At the of fourteen, he was
able to acquire the theorems of cosine and sine given by L. Euler.
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4. In 1903,
he had a book – Synopsis
of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics by George Shoobridge Carr – it
helped him a
lot and opened new dimensions to him which helped him introduce about 6,165
theorems for himself.
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5.
Rahmanujan and Hardy’s project was called partitioning. They found out
how many ways an integer can be expressed as the sum of others integers. For
example, the number 4 can be expressed as the sum of 1+3, 1+1+2, 1+1+1+1,
2+2, and 4 itself, for a total of 5 ways. Finally, they came out with the
formula of partitioning the large numbers.
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6.
Discovering simple but accurate ways of approximating the value of pi. Archimedes and Newton made
significant progress on it, but high-speed computers could not calculate pi to the accuracy of million decimal
places without using Rahmanujan’s formula
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Three facts of interest your mathematicians
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1.
He learned mathematics by himself without any guidance since he was
child and often won mathematics contest.
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2.
He was so confident since he was child and wanted to be famous someday.
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3.
He had a unique way of making complex problems simpler.
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Sources
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R.
Luetta & R. Wilbert. (1990). Mathematicians Are People, Too. USA: Dale
Seymour Publication
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http://www.famousscientists.org/srinivasa-ramanujan/
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