National Mathematics Day 2018: Why it is celebrated; Srinivasa Ramanujan's life, acheivements

Tomorrow (December 22) is the National Mathematics Day. It is observed to honor the birth anniversary of the famous mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan who greatly contributed towards mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series and continued fractions.

Ramanujan lived during the British Rule in India. He died at a young age of 32 in London on 26 April 1920. He had almost no formal training in pure mathematics.

During his short life, Ramanujan independently compiled nearly 3,900 results (mostly identities and equations). Many were completely novel; his original and highly unconventional results, such as the Ramanujan prime, the Ramanujan theta function, partition formulae and mock theta functions, have opened entire new areas of work and inspired a vast amount of further research.

Highlights of Srinivasa Ramanujan's life:

• In 1911, Ramanujan published the first of his papers in the Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society.
• Ramanujan's genius slowly gained recognition, and in 1913 he began a correspondence with the British mathematician Godfrey H. Hardy that led to a special scholarship from the University of Madras and a grant from Trinity College, Cambridge.
• Ramanujan traveled to England in 1914, where Hardy tutored him and collaborated with him in some research.
• He worked out the Riemann series, the elliptic integrals, hypergeometric series, the functional equations of the zeta function, and his own theory of divergent series.
• The number 1729 is known as the Hardy-Ramanujan number after a famous visit by Hardy to see Ramanujan at a hospital.
• Hardy observed Ramanujan's work primarily involved fields less known even amongst other pure mathematicians.

National Mathematics Day:

In 2011, on the 125th anniversary of his birth, the Indian Government declared that 22 December will be celebrated every year as National Mathematics Day.[75] Then Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also declared that the year 2012 would be celebrated as the National Mathematics Year.

he great Indian mathematicians such as Brahmagupta, Aryabhata, and Srinivasa Ramanujan have played a significant role in developing different formulas, theorems and theories on mathematics in India. And thus, it is important to promote and cultivate the magnificent tradition of Indian mathematics by celebrating National Mathematics Day.

Srinivasa Ramanujan's life:

Ramanujan was born in 1887 in Erode, Tamil Nadu, into an orthodox Iyengar Brahmin family. Ramanujan lived a life that was devoted to mathematics in all its passion. At a fledgling age of 11, Ramanujan began to show signs of an unfolding genius. By the age of 12, he had mastered trigonometry and developed many theorems on his own with no assistance.

Ramanujan spent nearly five years in Cambridge collaborating with Hardy and Littlewood, and published part of his findings there. Ramanujan was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree by research (this degree was later renamed PhD) in March 1916 for his work on highly composite numbers, the first part of which was published as a paper in the Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society. The paper was more than 50 pages and proved various properties of such numbers.

Throughout his life, Ramanujan was plagued by health problems. His health worsened in England; possibly he was also less resilient due to the difficulty of keeping to the strict dietary requirements of his religion in England and wartime rationing during 1914-1918. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis and a severe vitamin deficiency at the time, and was confined to a sanatorium. In 1919 he returned to Kumbakonam, Madras Presidency, and soon thereafter, in 1920, died at the age of 32.