National Mathematics Day 2020: Remembering mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan on his 133rd birthday

National Mathematics Day is celebrated every year on December 22 to recognize the achievements of the Indian Mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan who was born on this date in 1887. In 2012, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had declared December 22 as National Mathematics Day.

Srinivasa Ramanujan was born at Erode, Tamil Nadu in a Tamil Brahmin Iyengar family. Ramanujan joined the Government College in Kumbakonam in 1903. In college, he failed the exam due to his negligence for non-mathematical subjects.

In 1912, he started working as a clerk in the Madras Port Trust where his mathematical knowledge was recognized by a colleague who was also a mathematician. The said colleague referred Ramanujan to Professor GH Hardy, Trinity College, Cambridge University.

Ramanujan joined the Trinity College a few months before World War I began. In 1916, he received a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree. He was elected to the London Mathematical Society in 1917.

Next year, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for his research on Elliptic Functions and theory of numbers. In the same year, in October, he became the first Indian to be elected a Fellow of Trinity College.

Ramanujan returned to India in 1919 and a year later, he breathed his last at the age of 32.

In 2015, the movie ‘The Man Who Knew Infinity’ was released based on the biography of the Srinivasa Ramanujan. It describes the mathematician’s life in India, after he joined Cambridge University during World War 1 and his journey towards establishing the famed mathematical theories.