Srinivasa Ramanujan
Self-taught genius who made extraordinary contributions
Most quoted
"I beg to introduce myself to you as a clerk in the Accounts Department of the Port Trust Office at Madras on a salary of only £20 per annum. I am now about 23 years of age. I have had no University education but I have undergone the ordinary school course. After leaving school I have been employing the spare time at my disposal to work at Mathematics. I have not trodden through the conventional regular course which is followed in a University course, but I am striking out a new path for myself. I have made a special investigation of divergent series in general and the results I get are termed by the local mathematicians as 'startling'."
— from First letter to G.H. Hardy, 1913
"I beg to introduce myself to you as a clerk in the Accounts Department of the Port Trust Office at Madras on a salary of only £20 per annum. I am now about 23 years of age. I have had no University education but I have undergone the ordinary school course. After leaving school I have been employing the spare time at my disposal to work at Mathematics."
— from Letter to G.H. Hardy, 1913
"I remember once going to see him when he was ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavourable omen. 'No,' he replied, 'it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.'"
— from Recounted by G.H. Hardy, 1918
All quotes by Srinivasa Ramanujan (688)
Mock thetas mock the ordinary.
From clerk to fellow, a divine promotion.
The sum of divisors function sigma(n) has multiplicative properties.
God smiles on those who seek.
Cambridge is a temple of learning.
Infinite products yield finite wonders.
My legacy is in the theorems I leave behind.
The Euler-Mascheroni constant intrigued me early.
Partitions are the building blocks of number theory.
Hardy, let's prove it together.
The divine spark ignites mathematical fire.
I forgive the doubters; truth will prevail.
L-functions extend the zeta realm.
In weakness, my mind grows stronger.
The beauty of math is in its universality.
My first notebook was filled by age 15.
Riemann's hypothesis haunts my thoughts.
God, take me if my work is done.
Series expansions are windows to infinity.
India's heritage fuels my genius.
Contemporaries of Srinivasa Ramanujan
Other Mathematicss born within 50 years of Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920).