Ramanujan, Srinavasa Ayengar (1887–1920)

Indian mathematician who did original work especially in function theory and number theory.

Ramanujan was born near Kumbakonam, Madras (now Tamil Nadu), and taught himself mathematics from just one textbook, A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics by G S Carr, published in 1880. In 1914 he won a scholarship to Cambridge, England, but tuberculosis forced him to return to India in 1919.

Carr's textbook, and particularly the section on pure mathematics, was the basis of all Ramanujan's work. From the knowledge he gained he was able to proceed beyond the material published and develop his own results in many fields, but also kept ‘discovering’ already well-known theorems.

With his mentor, Cambridge mathematician G H Hardy, Ramanujan published a theory on the methods for partitioning an integer into a sum of smaller integers, called summands. In function theory he found accurate approximations to π, and worked on modular, elliptic, and other functions.

His collected papers were published by Hardy in 1927.