Ramanujams Mathematical Legacy (since Today

Dec 1987)
(December 22, 1887 April 26, 1920)

In many ways Ramanujams life was a series of paradoxes. His origins

made him perhaps the most antikely candidate to become the greatest
mathematician of this country. He was born in a poor prrahemin family
of kum bankonam town in south India in December 1887. His father
srinivasa was a clerk in cloths merchant shop.
Ramanujams Mathematical abilities were recognized early and
while still in high school he had mastered all the mathematics then
taught in undergraduate classes in colleges. A neighbor was a
mathematics student in a local college and Ramanujams obtained
undergraduate books through him. In 1902 while Ramanujams was still
at high school, the neighbor borrowed for him a book called A synopsis
of elementary results in pure and applied mathematics by cars. This
book really started him on a research causes. The book gave classified
list of thousands of results in various branches of mathematics with
almost no proofs. Ramanujams set about providing the proofs himself.
In this way he learnt a lot of the subject and at the same time
developed techniques of proof.
Cars book and world of good to Ramanujams but also provided
a somewhat imperfect model of how mathematical results should be
presented. This therefore remained a think in Ramanujams armor. He
never adequately appreciated the distance as necessity of a rigorous a
proof, he did not always put in down on paper

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Sometime of a 1903, he started to maintain a word of his

mathematical research in a notebook. And few years he held thereof
than of them with the most outstanding results in the theory of number
continued fractions, hyper geometric series, divergent series, definite
integrates and so on. These were to become famous as Ramanujams
notebook later. But following cars model, he gave thus no proof in the
notebook. It is about

was to work out

the details and device his

results on a state and record only the final result in the notebook
messhis(which were publish in a photocopy form in 1957) one
treasures house of result - some of which may be false. It required
heraleam efforts on the part of later mathematician & convert he bare
whole units convincing mathematical documents. (see proof k.a.
Ramanujams from on Ramanujams notebook also get an idea of what
they contains)

[NB notebook Ra- Ramanujams]

It is remarkable that the NB was written when RAM was group

through a landline he passed mathematician in 1903 but failed in the
first year (FA) examination as madhas university despite repeated
attempts because of his neglect of subjects other than mathematics he
finally had to give up studies. He over frustrated life for a few years
married in 1909 and made desperate but unsuccessful attempts in his
clerical job

in madhas port trust. By this time his mathematical

powers was somewhere established that madhas university started full

time scholarship to him to do mathematics Early in 1913, he began a
correspondence eith professors G.H.Hardy of Cauro ndge and through
professor Hardys efforts, Ramanujams sailed for England
1914.

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early in

He was in England that Ramanujams first come in contact with

living mathematics and His mathematical education really began.He
finally arrived
In the Trinity college at Cambridge, Ramanujams worked under
the supervision of two of the greatest English mathematicians of the
day - G.H.Hardy and J.E.Littlewood. The First word was soon took
littlewood do the waufsont and it was lift to Hardy to take the
equivalent geniuses of the orient.
Even though Hardy convinced Ramanujams that his suljeets
neglect as rigous proofs ud him sometimes to invalid results,
Ramanujams

could

not

be

completely

convinced

into

normal

mathematician. Hardy writes that in those days Ramanujams used to

discover way dogen new results, each day. He can handle be
unexpected is administer the

conaval lando efficiently at the same

time.
Much as Ramanujam as early work in India was rediscovery. An
important contribution was his finding several approcanatious to the
was known number . He obtained these by considering what are
called modular equations. No you take a wide whose radius is 1, then
have the length at the circle (air circumferences) is the number . It is
known from this fact that this number is neither an integer like 3 or 4
nor a fraction like 22/7 nor 355/133.

As

is not an easy number to work with we have to look for an

expression which can serve as a good approximation to

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for

Purposes of calculation 22/7 differs from

decimal (22/7 = 3.1428 and

&335/133 = 3.1415929 differs from

in the third place of

= 3.14159265358.) as hill

only in the seventh place of

decimal so the later is a much because approximation. Ramanujam

gave several expressions which is rager sharp approximation to .

63

One such expression is 25

(17+15 5)
(7+15 5)

which differs from

only

in the tenth place of decimal. And then as this expression was used

recently to calculate

to 17million digits places on a computer

Ramanujams formula was found to be tailor-made for use on the

computer.
Ramanujam was very strong in continued fractions (This is one
device to generate better approximations to intractable muhers such
as ) and his achievements with this field impressed Hardy
enormously. Although most of his results in theory of numbers were
residcoseries, they were no less remarkable for this reason. For
instance, he found several expressions for the numbers of prime
numbers not exceeding a specified number. All these were equivalent
and known earlier but only Mathematicians of the highest class such as
geeass, legendre and divichlet has found them before him. Indeed
Ramanujam gave as expression [0 series] which was apparently even
better than that of gauss in the sense that it gave the exact number of
primes to a much greater precision. However, his neglect of rigour and
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his ignorance of the theory of complex integration had led him

seriously astray in this field. Another area in number as seems of 2, 3
or more squares. Again, here he found all the results that had been
found earlier by such great European mathematicians as Jacori,
Legender and corehy. Yet another area in which Ramanujam had found
important result was the hyper geometric series.
The geometric series is the series 1+x+x 2+x3+. The hyper
geometric series is a generalization of this series. Ramanujams work
in this field is contained in two chapters of his notebooks which were
edited by Hardy after Ramanujams death. All his results seen to
revolve round a key formula which he probably found in1910 or 1911.
However his formula had been found earlier by Dougall and is now
known as the Dougall- Ramanujam identity. Special cases of this
identity yield a crowd of remarkable results. Ramanujam also
contributed to what are called basis hyoer geometric series, but we
shall refer to this later.
So

when

Ramanujam

reached

England

he

already

had

remarkable achievements to his credit. In England he continued to

work knowledge easily and with greater sophistication. In the theory of
numbers he made contribution to partition theory, representation of
numbers in quadnatic forms, arithmetic functions (partially to the
function of now known as Ramanujams tan function).He applies his
knowledge of basic hyper geometric seems to obtain some removable
results on partitions. Towards the end of his life he defined what he
called mock-theta functions and found top class results in the field.
In Euplard Hardy was undoubted by Ramanujams best friend,
philosopher,

Guide

and

collaborator.

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The

asymptotic

theory

of

partitions which was created by Hardy and Ramanujams together is

undoubted by a major mathematical conquest of this country. The
number of ways in which a positive integer can be expressed as
assume of one of more positive integers is called the numbers of
partitions of n , the number being denoted by p(n). For instance those
are 5 ways of writing 4 as a some of positive integers. May are:
4,3+1,2+2,2+1+1,1+1+1+1.
So p(4)=5. As n increases p(n)
example

p(10)=42,

increases very rapidly, For

p(50)=204226,

p(80)=15796476,

p(50)=40853233313.
Hardy and Ramanujam used elliptic modular function and now
method caused the circle method to obtain an expression for p(n)
which very rapidly gave almost the Exact value of p(n).
Ramanujam also found interesting side results for instance he
proved that p(4), p(9), p(14),etc. and is general, if the units digit of n is
4 or 9, then p(n) is divisible by 5. Connected to this was a basic hyper
geometric identity found by Ramanujam. The identity is quite involved
and it is a tribute to this initiative powers that he found it without being
able to prove it. Later he discovered that Rogers had published the
same identity several years earlier that but no one had later any
notice. Ramanujam ascure Rogers the credit and had a fruitful
correspondence with him as a result, Rogers was able to simplify his
original proof of the identity.
At the time of Ramanujam death in 192, a lot of his results
remained unpublished. The result remains unpublished. The results in
his notebook needed a great deal of editing, supplying of proofs and so
on. He could publish only a part of his work in England as the
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mathematical journals had wartime budgetary constraints and could

only publishes a limited amount of material.
After Ramanujams death, Hardy (who was then in possession of
Ramanujams text notebook) edited two of the chapters in the
notebook on hyper geometric series and publishes them. He published
several other papers dealing with Ramanujams work. B.N.Wilson and
A.N.Watson underwork to edit the notebooks during the thirties but
their work remained is complete because of Wilsons early death in
1935. The notebook were published unedited is fascinate form in 1957.
Recently Bruce Bernelt of ill inois state university undertook to resume
the work as Wilson and Watson. The first volume as the edited version
of Ramanujams notebooks was published in 1985. In 1976 Andausws
also discovered among Watsons papers as hitherts unknown 100-page
manuscript of Ramanujam called the lost notebook it was written
during the last year of Ramanujams lifewhile he was terminally ill and
contains externally powerful results- equivalent to the output of a
lifetime offer an ordinary mathematician.
The inside method invented by Hardy & Ramanujam has proved
to be an extremely powerful weapon in the among of analytical number
theorists. It has been applied to solve the famous warings problem
(concerning representation of intiqus as sums of n th powers for fired n).
Mathematicians also work on warships problem from 1918 to 1985
include Hardy, Littlewood, pllai, Chenjing ram, R Balasubramanian, De
shoullikens and Dresss.
The

wide

method

way

used

by

Russian

mathematician

visogsador is prove a consequence of the famous (but as yet

unapproved) ewldback conficlents which states that very even number

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is assume of two primes. The asymptotic theory of partitions was

improved in 1937 by Rademacher and recently several Hengarian
mathematician have investigated a various of the partitions functions.
Two of Ramanujams conjeetions were proud by the Normegian
mathematician Nagell in 1960 and the French mathematician Deligne
in 1974
R.J.Baxter of Australian applied same of Ramanujams work
stalintically to solve the hand hexagonal model in statistical mechanics
and carlos morena of New york found Ramanujams work on modular
forms this for investigating the 26 dimensional models of string theory.
Results contained a little known 1912paper of Ramanujams
have been wredto obtain a decoding algorithms for special BCH codes.
Thus the extent of Ramanujams impact on mathematics is a
very wide ranging. Two decades of Ramanujams work may keep
mathematician busy for two centuries. What more can one ask from a
men with such humble beginings, such poor surroundings and such
adverse circumference is contend with?
In India Ramanujams work is of interest today to relatively few
mathematicians. This is because the theory of numbers is not studied
as widely as before in the after math of Ramanujam, india produced
great number theorist such as Vaidyanathaswami, Vijayaraghavan,
S.S.Pillai, S.Ceawea all it cupta.
Almost are were allied to Ramanujams research area is being
carried out in India at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research,
Bombay, Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Madhas and Ramanujam
Institue, also of Madhas.
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However Ramanujams work is special functions out hyper

geometric series is as great cument intrest in India Prof. R.P.Agarwal
established a vigorous school in their areas at Lucknow. He is now the
Vice-Chairmen of Rajasthan University and is still actively engaged in
research. There are also waolans working in this area of Gorakhpur,
Baroda, etc.
Ramanujam has many followes among mathematicians around
professors G.E.Andrews of pennsylania state university and Bruce
Bernet of ill nois University are the form most among there. They have
conenthed

and

proved

number

of

valuable

theorams

from

Ramanujams notebooks and other unpublished manuscripts. Professor

borwein of Canada and as key of win consist one the other mains
contributes to Ramanujams heritage. Components have permitted
today mathematician to handle very complicate problems is within
powers its light their way through the mare. The next but theory to do
is by and outstans Ramanujams mental processes and many are trying
to do first that.
His view of all the tributes part to Ramanujam this year, one
might wonder if our school or college students could be made to study
some of his work as part of their syllabus. Personally believes that it
could not be advisable of their time. Perhaps is a century from now,
when his work will have been explore, better understood and
simplified, it might be possible to take Ramanujam to the classrooms.
In the meantime our students should be made familiar town some as
Ramanujam simple but highly impressive and interesting results in his
notebook as part of their circular mathematical activity.

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