Born on December 22, 1887 in Tamil Nadu, Ramanujam was an Indian mathematician and autodidact who, with almost no formal training in pure mathematics, made extraordinary contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions.
By age 11, he had exhausted the mathematical knowledge of two college students who were lodgers at his home. He was later lent a book on advanced trigonometry written by S. L. Loney. He completely mastered this book by the age of 13 and discovered sophisticated theorems on his own.
We hadn’t known before that he faced a lot of health problems while living in England due to scarcity of vegetarian food. He returned to India and died at a young age of 32.
Ramanujan’s home state of Tamil Nadu celebrates 22 December (Ramanujan’s birthday) as ‘State IT Day’, memorializing both the man and his achievements.
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