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)
My theorems are not the product of my brain alone; they come from a higher source.
I am dying. Please inform Hardy that the final formula has come to me.
The integral formula I sent you last month is not quite correct. Here is the corrected version...
I am extremely sorry for not writing you a single letter up to now... I have discovered very interesting functions recently which I call 'Mock' ϑ-functions. Unlike the 'False' ϑ-functions (studied partially by Prof. Rogers in his interesting paper) they enter into mathematics as beautifully as the ordinary theta functions.
The number of divisors of a number is sometimes equal to the number itself.
I am a man of simple tastes. I only want independence of thought.
The infinite series are the invention of the devil.
I am always afraid of things which are not clear to me.
Theorems are waiting to be discovered. They exist in some plane of reality, and we merely find them.
My mind is a blank when it comes to politics. I can only think of numbers.
The number 24 is very important. It appears in my theory of partitions.
A congruence property of partitions: p(5n+4) is divisible by 5.
I am not a calculator in the sense of a computer. I see patterns.
My family goddess, Namagiri, she writes the equations on my tongue.
When I die, do not mourn. The numbers will remember me.
Hardy's taxi number was not dull. It was a revelation.
I have found a connection between π, e, and the golden ratio.
The continued fraction for the golden ratio is the simplest and most beautiful.
Do not try to correct my intuition with your logic.
The prime numbers are the atoms of arithmetic.
Contemporaries of Srinivasa Ramanujan
Other Mathematicss born within 50 years of Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920).