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)
The taxicab number jokes on its ordinariness.
Elliptic functions curve gracefully.
Persistence is the key to mathematical doors.
My visions are validated by proofs.
The end is near, but discoveries continue.
Bernoulli numbers dance in my equations.
Mathematics is my religion.
From obscurity to immortality through numbers.
The integral of 1/(1+x^4) dx has a beautiful form.
Hardy, your letters are lifelines.
I see the goddess in every theorem.
My body fails, but spirit soars.
The Ramanujan conjecture on tau function.
Humor in numbers: 1729's dual identity.
Education is not degrees, but discovery.
Infinite jest in finite sums.
The path to truth is lined with failures.
Fourier series resonate with my soul.
God whispers through equations.
My work for India and the world.
Contemporaries of Srinivasa Ramanujan
Other Mathematicss born within 50 years of Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920).