The Incredible Life of Srinivasa Ramanujan
In 1913 a letter was received by English mathematician G.H. Hardy at the University of Cambridge from India. The letter, written by 26 year old Indian genius, Srinivasa Ramanujan, contained theorems that Hardy stated "defeated me completely; I had never seen anything in the least like them before" comparing Ramanujan to mathematical giants Euler and Jacobi.
Born in British occupied India in 1887 Ramanujan was recognised as a child prodigy from the age of 11 and, working largely in isolation from the mathematical world, had independently discovered work previously uncovered by Bernoulli and Euler by the age of 16.
Travel to Cambridge
Ramanujan's Death & Legacy
In 1919 Ramanujan travelled back to India and, plagued by health problems his entire life, he died of suspected tuberculosis in 1920 at the age of 32.
In his short life Ramanujan compiled 3900 results. He left behind three notebooks that were poured over following his death and as late as 2012 new areas of mathematics were being discovered in them.
Following his death Hardy wrote of the man he mentored that "his insight into formulae was quite amazing, and altogether beyond anything I have met with in any European mathematician... it is not extravagant to suppose that he might have become the greatest mathematician of his time"
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