As you all aware of the facts that Dr Manmohan Singh has introduced 22nd December to be celebrated as National Mathematics Day. It was he who released a postal stamp on Ramanujan in 2011.
2. The first stamp on Ramanujan was released in the year 1962 by postal department to commemorate the 75th birthyear of Ramanujan.
1. Ramanujan was born in Erode in his maternal mother's house. It is unfortunate that this house was discovered in year 2012 by Susumu Sakurai, professor and head, Department of Math, Tokyo University of Science and Technology, and Dr. N. Mani, professor, Government Arts College, Erode, and president, Tamil Nadu Science Forum.
It took 126 years to trace the house where Ramanujan was born. Unfortunately, it was discovered by a Japanese Professor.
2. Ramanujan was a devotee of Goddess Namagiri. For every discovery of his, Ramanujan gave due credit to the goddess. He wrote - An equation has no meaning for me until it expressed the thought of God. Even before going to England, Ramanujan went to Namakkal to take permission from God.
1. JANKI AMMAL (RAMANUJAN'S WIFE) adopted a son after the death of Ramanujan W Narayanan who took care of Janki till her death.
SOURCE:- RAMANUJAN MUSEUM AND MATH EDUCATION CENTRE CHENNAI
2. Ramanujan got enrolled in Town High School and for his academic brilliance he got Ranganath Rao Award for securing the highest marks in Mathematics and English
3. Film God, Zero and Infinity has been shot at different places - Kumbakonam. Trinity College and TIFR. In this film an interview with his adopted son was recorded.
1. Ramanujan's house at Kumbkakonam (in the picture below) has now been converted in a Museum and it was inaugurated by Dr A P J Abdul Kalam and being maintained by SASTRA University.
RAMANUJAN'S HOUSE WHICH IS NOW A MUSEUM
(SOURCE :- RAMANUJAN MUSEUM AND MATH EDUCATION CENTRE, CHENNAI)
2. In order to get a job of clerk in Madras Port, Ramanujan wrote a job application (SEE ABOVE)
3. It is heartening to know that Janki Ammal (Ramanujan's wife) had to write a letter to Robert Aksey to do a favour to her to have a bust of him. It took more than 35 long years and intervention of world level mathematicians to collect fund for the bust.
Ramanujan’s work includes Prime Number, Hyper Geometric Series, Modular function, Elliptical functions, Mock theta function, Magic square, Number theory and some geometry. Many of his results have been used in subject like particle physics, statistical mechanics, computer science, cryptography and space travel. Let me simplify the same for the young readers.
His work on Riemann zeta function have been applied on the theory of pyrometry aimed at making better blast furnaces.
His result has been used to find the better approximate value of pi.
In 1989, Chudnovsky brothers computed π to over 1 billion decimal places on a supercomputer using a variation of Ramanujan’s infinite series of π.
3. Crystallographer S. Ramaseshan has shown how Ramanujan’s partition theory sheds light on polymer technology. his work on partition has found useful in splicing telephone cables, whose shorter subunits of varying length, again add up to make a whole.
His work on partition theory has applications in a number of areas including particle physics (particularly quantum field theory) and probability.
4. Ramanujan published his paper titled “On certain arithmetical functions” in the year 1916 that investigated the properties of Fourier coefficients of modular forms. He also developed three conjectures on it and his first two conjectures helped develop the Hecke theory, which was formulated 20 years after his paper, in 1936, by German mathematician Erich Hecke.
His third conjecture played a pivotal role in the development of Langlands program in 1970 under Robert Langlands. This program aims to combine two mathematical branches Representation theory and algebraic number theory.
5. Famous Physicist Prof A K Sen has used Ramanujan’s Modular equation to analyze the concept of String theory.
6. The famous taxi cab number and the elliptical curve y^2=x^3+ ax + b that Ramanujan worked on, has a great impact on K3 surface which plays pivotal role in Quantum physics. Calabi- Yau Manifold is an example of K3 surface.
(Courtesy: - Wikipedia)
8. Ramanujan’ work on Theta Function is used to determine the critical dimensions in Bosonic string theory, superstring theory and M-theory.
9. Mathematician Ken Ono says that Ramanujan’s work on Mock Modular form is now used to compute the entropy, or level of disorder, of black holes.
10. Even the Cloud Computing we use is based on Ramanujan’s result.
