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 Lambert series unfolds secrets.
In every problem, a solution awaits.
Hardy and Littlewood, pillars of my success.
The veil of mystery lifts in math.
Childhood curiosity birthed a mathematician.
Divergent series converge in the mind.
Farewell, my friends; the infinite calls.
The beta function bridges integrals.
Pride in my Tamil roots.
Numbers laugh at human limits.
The journey from intuition to rigor.
Eternal gratitude to my mentors.
Siegel modular forms extend my vision.
In dreams, math is revealed.
The gamma function generalizes factorial.
Divine comedy in number theory.
Life's equation balances joy and sorrow.
My unpublished papers hold treasures.
From Kumbakonam to eternity.
The asymptotic expansion for pi.
Contemporaries of Srinivasa Ramanujan
Other Mathematicss born within 50 years of Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920).