(Press-News.org) On December 22, 1887, Srinivasa Ramanujan was born to a poor family in
the state of Tamil Nadu in South India. From humble and obscure
beginnings, he blossomed into one of the greatest mathematical
geniuses of all time. Largely self-taught and cut off from much of
the current mathematical work of his time, he nevertheless produced
observations and results that continue to dazzle.
This year, the world is celebrating the 125th anniversary of the birth
of Ramanujan. To mark this occasion, the NOTICES OF THE AMS is
publishing "Srinivasa Ramanujan: Going Strong at 125", a collection of
articles by top experts that discuss Ramanujan's legacy and its impact
on current mathematics. The articles will appear in two installments,
the first in the December 2012 issue of the Notices (to be posted
online on November 13, 2012), and the second in the January 2013 issue
(to be posted online on December 6, 2012). The Notices is freely
available without subscription at http://www.ams.org/notices.
Ramanujan had an intimate familiarity with numbers that seems to have
stemmed from his awe-inspiring ability to calculate with them. This
ability gave him a profound understanding of numbers and their
relationships. The famous story about the "taxicab number"
exemplifies this familiarity. At the invitation of the mathematician
G.H. Hardy, Ramanujan visited Cambridge, England, in 1914 and lived
there for several years. Once when Hardy traveled by taxicab to pay a
visit to Ramanujan, he remarked that the cab had had a very dull
number, 1729. "No", Hardy recalled Ramanujan as replying, "it is a
very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the
sum of two cubes in two different ways."
Ramanujan's contributions to mathematics were cut short by his
untimely death in 1920, when he was just 32. He left behind several
notebooks in which he recorded his findings, and these have been a
wellspring of mathematical activity. Several world-class
mathematicians have devoted much of their careers to understanding the
material in the notebooks. As a result, Ramanujan's impact in
mathematics has continued to grow over the years.
Today an annual conference on Ramanujan's work is held in his
hometown, and three prizes and a research journal are named after him.
His personality and achievements have captured the imagination of the
general public. The definitive biography of Ramanujan, "The Man Who
Knew Infinity", by Robert Kanigel, appeared in 1991, and a novelized
treatment of his relationship with Hardy, "The Indian Clerk" by David
Leavitt, was published in 2007. Movies and plays have also appeared,
including a documentary called "Letters from an Indian Clerk",
produced for the Equinox science series in 1987; the documentary was
recently posted on Youtube at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OARGZ1xXCxs.
###
The collection of articles, "Srinivasa Ramanujan: Going Strong at
125", is edited by Krishnaswami Alladi (University of Florida) and
contains contributions by Alladi, George Andrews (Penn State), Bruce
Berndt (University of Illinois), Jonathan Borwein (University of
Newcastle, Australia), Ken Ono (Emory University), K. Soundararajan
(Stanford), R. C. Vaughan (Penn State), and S. Ole Warnaar (University
of Queensland).
Founded in 1888 to further mathematical research and scholarship,
today the more than 30,000 member American Mathematical Society
fulfills its mission through programs and services that promote
mathematical research and its uses, strengthen mathematical education,
and foster awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its
connections to other disciplines and to everyday life.
Contacts: Mike Breen and Annette Emerson
Public Awareness Officers, American Mathematical Society
Email: paoffice@ams.org
American Mathematical Society
201 Charles Street
Providence, RI 02904
401-455-4000 END
Celebrating the mathematical genius Ramanujan
2012-11-13
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