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)
I have found some new series for pi.
I have discovered some new identities for mock theta functions.
These are the results I have found, and I hope they are correct.
I am a poor man, and I have no university education.
I have been working on the theory of elliptic functions.
I have found some new theorems in the theory of numbers.
I hope you will be able to help me with my work.
I am very anxious to publish my results.
I have found some new results in the theory of continued fractions.
I am sending you some of my notebooks.
I have been working on the theory of series.
I have found some new identities for the Riemann zeta function.
I have found some new results in the theory of modular forms.
I have found some new results in the theory of q-series.
I have found some new results in the theory of hypergeometric series.
I have found some new results in the theory of integrals.
I have found some new results in the theory of infinite series.
I have found some new results in the theory of approximations.
I have found some new results in the theory of algebraic equations.
I have found some new results in the theory of transcendental equations.
Contemporaries of Srinivasa Ramanujan
Other Mathematicss born within 50 years of Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920).