Ramanujan was a very incredible fellow. He lived around the 1900's, just the turn of the millennium. He worked mathematics mostly in seclusion, working out results on a slate, recording his results in his notebooks, and then erasing the proofs on the slate because he could so easily reproduce any proof and was too poor to afford the paper on which he might otherwise have recorded them. Then he was discovered by the famous mathematician Hardy. He moved to England, worked at Cambridge, "dazzled" the world with more incredible results the likes of which had never been seen, became sick, was committed to numerous sanatoria, and then died very young around the age of 32 from severe stomach pain. Now he is hailed as the most brilliant mathematician of his time. Hardy declared him to be another Euler or Jacobi (i.e., easily competing with the most brilliant mathematicians who have ever lived). Considering that he had little more education than reading a college freshman level calculus book plus one or two equal level books, one seriously wonders about him. People like Berndt and others have inherited the onerous task of trying to figure out what Ramanujan did on his slate, and of editing and correcting the many results in his notebooks. Scores and scores and scores of math Ph. D.'s later, no one knows for sure.
2. Web references for Ramanujan
I am going to write up some summaries of Ramanujan's brilliant but short career. Before I do this I present a series of internet references where you can begin reading up. Many of these items can be found by performing an internet search. These short internet biographies allow much to be learned in a short time.
Written by George Schils
Copyright © 2005-2008 George Schils. All rights reserved.