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)
Mathematics unites the world.
Intuitive leaps bridge gaps.
The end comes, but math endures.
My heart beats in rhythms of primes.
Correspondence with Narayana Iyer sparked it all.
The joy of discovery outweighs all.
Vector spaces in number fields.
God’s hand guides the pencil.
1729: small number, big surprise.
The legacy of Ramanujan lives on.
Integrals and sums intertwine.
In silence, formulas emerge.
The infinite series of life.
Primes are the atoms of arithmetic.
My story is one of faith and math.
The Dedekind eta function transforms.
Humor: why did the number go to therapy? It had identity issues like 1729.
Truth in math is absolute.
From clerkship to knighthood? No, to genius.
The pain of separation from home.
Contemporaries of Srinivasa Ramanujan
Other Mathematicss born within 50 years of Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920).