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)
Colleagues, your critiques sharpen me.
Life's partitions into moments of genius.
The Weber class number problem.
Wit: why is 1 special? It's the loneliest number.
The pursuit of pi's digits.
Divine light illuminates the path.
My youth was spent in mathematical reverie.
The triple product identity shines.
Mathematics: the language of the universe.
Hardy, your book inspired me.
In final hours, I see the whole.
The joy of shared discovery.
Eternal quest for elegance in proof.
The Ramanujan graph in modern terms.
Peace in the arms of infinity.
To preserve my brains, I must think of God.
I can write down the most complicated expressions, but I cannot explain them.
It is a peculiar thing, this mathematical intuition. It is not logic, but it is more than logic.
I am only a medium through which God is doing His work.
I found my own way of working, and I did not need to be taught.
Contemporaries of Srinivasa Ramanujan
Other Mathematicss born within 50 years of Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920).