

125th Birthday of Ramanujan - vipinsahu
http://www.usna.edu/Users/math/meh/ramanujan.html
one of the greatest mathematicians human race has ever known
======
ajays
A young George Polya, the Hungarian mathematician (and Stanford faculty) was
in England once, and asked Hardy to see one of Ramanujan's notebooks. The next
day, he returned the notebook in a panic, saying "there is so much in there,
that I'll spend my entire life working on these proofs and never be able to do
any original work". (paraphrased).

Ramanujan's accounts of how he arrived at the proofs ("the Goddess revealed it
to me"), reminds me of Paul Erdos's "theory", that "God" has a big book of all
possible proofs, called "The Book"; and if you're a nice mathematician, once
in a while He will open the book and reveal one to you. Taking up this thread,
a couple of mathematicians compiled some of the most beautiful proofs and
published them as "Proofs from The Book". [http://www.amazon.com/Proofs-THE-
BOOK-Martin-Aigner/dp/36420...](http://www.amazon.com/Proofs-THE-BOOK-Martin-
Aigner/dp/3642008550)

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donretag
I recommend the fantastic book: The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the
Genius Ramanujan. A good read even for someone not into mathematics.

~~~
kranner
I'd like to mention David Leavitt's The Indian Clerk: historical fiction about
Hardy and Ramanujan. I enjoyed it very much.

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soitgoes
I enjoyed this documentary -

Ramanujan: Letters from an Indian Clerk:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OARGZ1xXCxs>

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playhard
Google is honouring him with a doodle today

Edit: Looks like Google is displaying it only in India

<https://www.google.co.in/>

~~~
gjm11
Too bad nothing in the doodle has anything to do with anything Ramanujan did.
(Beyond the level of "both contain square-root signs".)

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sksk
I a huge fan of Ramanujan and one of my favorite story of his is: Ramanujan
was in school and his teacher was explaining the concept of division when the
numerator and denominator are the same. The teacher says "if there are 5
people in the class and we have 5 apples, then each one will get one apple. If
we have 10 people and 10 apples, then each one will still get one apple".

Ramanujan asks the teacher, if there are zero people in the class and there
are zero apples, will each person still get one apple?

I am not sure how old he was at that time but going by the topic, must have
been in middle school. Amazing how his mind worked even at that young an
age...

I believe the story was also mentioned in The Man Who Knew Infinity (but don't
remember if the narrative is the same or not).

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hkmurakami
I read GH Hardy's _A Mathematician's Apology_ last month and adored the
relationship Hardy and Ramanujan had.

(great book by the way - easy to read for even a non math person)

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dctoedt
From the article: _Ramanujan's results were (as Hardy put it) "arrived at by a
process of mingled argument, intuition, and induction, of which he was
entirely unable to give any coherent account"._

We can only marvel at (1) the human brain, the workings of which we know so
little (as recent events in Newtown tragically reminded us in a very different
way); and (2) mathematics, with which such a brain was able somehow to
interact so fruitfully.

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pjscott
I wonder what's special about the number 125?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1729_(number)>

~~~
statictype
Wasn't 1729 also the name of the team Waterhouse was part of in Cryptonomicon?

~~~
packetslave
That was Detachment 2702 (which was originally Detachment 2701, but Lawrence
worried that Rudy would notice the name since it's the product of two primes)

~~~
bwhite
Not just that, but two palindromic primes!

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yarapavan
Here is AMS Editor, Krishnaswami Alladi's, notice on the same -
<http://www.ams.org/notices/201211/rtx121101522p.pdf>

The Hindu newspaper celebrates Ramanujan@125 here -
<http://www.thehindu.com/system/topicRoot/Ramanujan___125/>

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31reasons
The question is in this day and age why can't we find another Ramanujan ? Have
we somehow destroyed the ecosystem in which such a mind could exist and have a
capacity for deep thoughts. Was he so special that someone like him could
exist once every millennia. How many Ramanujans died before they could meet
their Prof Hardy. Just wondering..

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lightcatcher
This thread on reddit (/r/math) celebrating Ramanujan's 125th birthday
highlights some of his most interesting results and stories about him:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/159q0h/today_is_sriniv...](http://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/159q0h/today_is_srinivasa_ramanujans_birthday/)

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yarapavan
UFL recenlty held a conference to commemorate the 125th anniversary of
Ramanujan's birth.

<http://www.math.ufl.edu/~fgarvan/ramanujan125.html>

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casca
The Complicité theatre company made a wonderful play about Ramanujan called A
Disappearing Number that was excellent and widely praised

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/sep/15/a-disappearing-n...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/sep/15/a-disappearing-
number-review)

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Disappearing_Number>

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seanlinehan
This man had unimaginable genius!

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sunnybythesea
His life story would make a very inspirational film. I see this old link from
2006 about an upcoming film, but can't find any stories about the finished
film. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4811920.stm> Was it cancelled
perhaps?

~~~
andrewcooke
there's a summary of attempts here -
[http://www.indiastudychannel.com/resources/146675-A-film-
an-...](http://www.indiastudychannel.com/resources/146675-A-film-an-Indian-
mathematical-prodigy.aspx)

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Selfcommit
They mention that Hardy and Ramanujan solved P(n) - but I can't seem to find
any information on their solution.

I'm not a maths person but this perked my interest - Anyone have more
information?

~~~
gjm11
They found an asymptotic series for p(n) -- the number of partitions of n,
i.e. the number of ways to write n as a sum of positive integers where you
don't count 1+2 and 2+1 as different ways -- with the property that if you
take an appropriate number of terms, the nearest integer to the result equals
p(n) exactly. Hans Rademacher later tweaked this to give a _convergent_ series
that gives p(n) exactly.

The first term of the series (both Hardy&Ramanujan's and Rademacher's) is 1/(4
n sqrt(3)) exp(pi sqrt(2n/3)), which is already a good approximation in the
sense that the ratio p(n)/this_approximation(n) tends to 1 as n gets large.
This approximation theorem was conjectured by Ramanujan before he came to
England, and proved by him and Hardy jointly.

You can find the actual formulae at
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_%28number_theory%29#A...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_%28number_theory%29#Approximation_formulas)
and more details at
[http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Sp7z9sK7RNkC&pg=PA68&...](http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Sp7z9sK7RNkC&pg=PA68&lpg=PA68)
.

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simplekoala
He died at the young age of 32! What a tragedy! Simply amazing what he had
accomplished by then. Always wondered the impact he would have had had he not
died at such an young age.

~~~
redfalcon6
I read the bio - and it appears that he was partly killed by the Brits' crappy
food!

"But the alien climate and culture took a toll on his health. Ramanujan had
always lived in a tropical climate and had his mother (later his wife) to cook
for him: now he faced the English winter, and he had to do all his own cooking
to adhere to his caste's strict dietary rules."

~~~
andrewcooke
it was during a war. there was little food for everyone. he was also a strict
vegetarian, which didn't help, and he was suffering from tb.

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theanalyst
A good tribute to the genius he was

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vineel
I was watching _Good Will Hunting_ last night. I didn't realize this guy was
real.

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fpp
Bill Gosper used Ramanujan's formula to calculate the first 17 million digits
of pi

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lukazmith
But was he poisoned by a jealous Brit? We will never know :(

