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K. Srinivasa Rao

Srinivasa
Ramanujan
Life and Work of a Natural
Mathematical Genius, Swayambhu
Srinivasa Ramanujan
K. Srinivasa Rao

Srinivasa Ramanujan
Life and Work of a Natural Mathematical
Genius, Swayambhu
K. Srinivasa Rao
Theoretical Physics
The Institute of Mathematical Sciences
Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

ISBN 978-981-16-0446-1 ISBN 978-981-16-0447-8 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0447-8

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Singapore
Pte Ltd. 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse
of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar
or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
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This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, 1-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721,
Singapore
Dedicated to my parents
Sri Killampalli Vallabheswar Rao
(22 December 1889–10 Janunary 1983)
B.A., B.L., Advocate
and
Srimathi Dhanalakoti Lakshmikanthamma
(15 May 1907–19 December 2003)

and siblings,
with gratitude for their unbounded affection.
Foreword

For many decades, I have kept the portraits of three scientists I admire behind my
office chair for inspiration. One of them is the great Indian mathematical genius
Srinivasa Ramanujan, the others being those of Sir C.V. Raman and Dr. Homi J.
Bhabha. The results of the self-taught Ramanujan’s research and his conjecures,
jotted down in his famous Notebooks, are still being analysed, and sometimes used
in applications Ramanujan had not dreamed of, or could have been interested in.
These Notebooks, including his ‘Lost’ and found Notebook, representing work
carried out during his short lifespan of a little over 32 years, contains about 4000
entries/theorems. He did not provide proofs for them; he perhaps thought they were
obvious, or he followed the methodology of the Sutras in Hindu scriptures. It is
incredible that there are almost no errors in them.
This book includes a brief biographical account of his life. It also gives glimpses
into his work on number theory, partitions, continued fractions, ‘mock’ theta
functions and especially hypergeometric functions. The author’s own work in
hypergeometric functions, as inspired by the work of Ramanujan, is also presented.
The book provides complete lists of all the papers of Ramanujan in the Wren
Library of Trinity College, the letters and other material about him with the National
Archives, Chennai. The 75th, 100th and 125th birth anniversaries of Ramanujan

vii
viii Foreword

have also been celebrated in different ways the world over. Some of the significant
events in those years are mentioned in the book.
The author has earlier created two CD ROMs on the life and work of Srinivasa
Ramanujan during these events and these are also described in the book.
Over the years, there have been other books on Ramanujan, but Dr. Killampalli
Srinivasa Rao, a well-known Mathematical Physicist himself, has been studying and
researching on the life and work of Ramanujan over decades and has lectured on the
Entries in Ramanujan’s Notebooks. Add to that his Indian cultural background, and
we may say that there is perhaps no person today more qualified than Srinivasa Rao
to write the biography of Ramanujan.
Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920), who has been compared to all time greats
like Euler, Gauss and Jacobi, has been an eternal source of inspiration, especially to
students and researchers in Mathematics.
The author has expressed the hope that this book will add to our existing
knowledge about Ramanujan and appreciation of his profound work. I am sure that
his very readable book will.

Former Chairman Department of Atomic Energy, R. Chidambaram

Govt. of India
Former Principal Scientific Advisor to the Govt. of India
New Delhi
March 2020
Foreword ix
Preface

This work on Srinivasa Ramanujan, who for a natural genius has been compared
with Euler and Gauss, is the outcome of my lectures on the life and work of
Srinivasa Ramanujan at several institutes and universities in India and abroad. I
was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Institut für Theoretische Physik
der Universität Bonn, Germany, for 2 years (1977–1980). During a four-year
collaboration project (1992–1996) funded by the European Economic Commission,
with me as Principal Investigator from the Institute of Mathematical Sciences
(IMSc), India, and Prof. Guido Vanden Berghe as Principle Investigator from the
University of Ghent, Belgium, I had the privilege of addressing the Flemish Royal
Academy at Brussels on Gauss, Ramanujan and Hypergeometric series.
My lectures on the life and work of Srinivasa Ramanujan started during the
Ramanujan birth centenary year in December 1987. I had the pleasure and privilege
of accompanying the delegation of Prof. Richard Askey, Prof. George Andrews,
Prof. Bruce Berndt, Prof. Robert Rankin, Prof. Don Zagier, Prof. E.C. George
Sudarshan and Prof. G. Bhamathi and also giving the opening lecture on the life
and work of Srinivasa Ramanujan at an international conference held in honour of
Ramanujan at the Institute of Fundamental studies, Kandy, Sri Lanka, that year.
My first detailed acquaintance with the “romantic” story of Ramanujan’s life
and glimpses into his work was through Ramanujan: Letters and Reminiscences,
and Ramanujan: An Inspiration, two volumes edited by (late) P. K. Srinivasan,
Muthialpet High School, Madras (1968), published to mark the 75th birth anniver-
sary of Ramanujan. I am thankful to my research guide, mentor and Founder
Director of IMSc, Prof. Alladi Ramakrishnan, who directed me to acquire copies
of this two volume compilation. I acquired a copy of the same for myself and
one for my fellow student at IMSc at that time, Ms. P.K. Geetha. In 1976, she
became Dr. Geetha Srinivasa Rao my better-half, a mathematician of repute in
functional analysis and approximation theory, who retired as Professor from the
Ramanujan Institute for Advanced Study in Mathematics (RIASM), University
of Madras, India. Among the many achievements in her illustrious career, she
became, in 2012, President of the Indian Mathematical Society. Many facts and
most of my writings on Ramanujan were scrutinized by her meticulously for

xi
xii Preface

which I am grateful to her. A better understanding of the genius of Ramanujan

came to me with my acquaintance with the special functions group led by Prof.
Ratan P. Agarwal, Professor of Mathematics and later Vice Chancellor of Lucknow
University and Rajasthan University, India. I was directed by Prof. Sudarshan,
Director, MATSCIENCE, the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, in March 1986,
to go to Gorakhpur University and participate in a National Seminar on Special
Functions. The subsequent year’s birth centenary celebrations brought me into
contact with Professors Richard Askey, George Andrews and Bruce Berndt, the
ardent followers of the work of Ramanujan.
My area of research shifted from theoretical nuclear physics to the quantum
theory of angular momentum and then to theory of generalized hypergeometric
series, their transformations as well as their group theoretical aspects, from the mid-
1980s. This enabled me to make a few contributions to number theory, in the area
of multiplicative Diophantine equations (what may be considered as an unstated
part of the tenth Problem of David Hilbert), and special functions—in particular,
generalized hypergeometric functions, ordinary and basic, summation theorems
for hypergeometric series, and group theory for transformations of hypergeometric
functions. This stimulated my interest in the work of Ramanujan, which has been
propagated through the works of George Andrews on the ‘Lost’ notebook of
Ramanujan and the five volumes work of Bruce Berndt on Ramanujan’s Notebooks.
The following were my sources of inspiration: a biography titled The Man Who
Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan, by Robert Kanigel, a bound copy of
which was graciously sent to me by Prof. Bruce Berndt in June 1991; visits to Smt.
Janaki Ramanujan, often accompanying visiting mathematicians who wanted to pay
their respects to the wife of the mathematical genius Ramanujan; several discussions
with her in the company of my journalist friend, (late) Mr. A. Ranganathan, over the
years and the gentle persuasions of Mr. C. A. Reddi, culminated in my visiting the
National Archives in New Delhi and the Wren Library of Trinity College. Thanks
to Prof. Robert Rankin, a table was reserved for me for 2 days (in October 1995), to
see for myself the originals in the Archives of the Wren Library.
J.M. Whittaker’s statement, in February 1979, that “Rankin and I thought that
Trinity was the right place for it (Ramanujan’s notebooks), rather than India which
had done nothing for him”,1 has been refuted by Berndt and Rankin,2 in their
Ramanujan Letters and Commentary, who assert that “it is clear that his Indian
colleagues had done all that was within their powers to assist him.”
This work is an attempt to provide a brief introduction to the life and work of
Srinivasa Ramanujan; my study led to a few new results and a new summation
theorem, directly as a consequence of combining two of his entries in his chapter
on hypergeometric series. It is also written with the hope that it will stimulate the

1 J.M. Whittaker’s statement, to G.E. Andrews, 15 August 1979, in Ramanujan: Letters and

Commentary, Bruce C. Berndt and Robert A. Rankin, AMS-LMS (1995).

2 Also, an Indian Edition with a Preface, Additions to the Indian Edition and Errata, by K. Srinivasa

Rao, published by Affiliated East West Press Pvt. Ltd. (1997).

Preface xiii

interest of the mathematics student, on what Ramanujan did to become renowned as

a natural mathematical genius.
Dr. Samuel Johnson said: “Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject
ourselves, or, we know where we can find information about it.”
In that spirit, the author hopes that the reader will find pointers to the original
sources of his work for further study. This is the Ramanujan Remembrance Cente-
nary Year and the author wishes to stress the need for a National Science Museum, in
a spacious area, with all amenities and facilities, which will portray to the common
man, as well as the interested student and specialist in science and technology, the
evolution and growth of physical laws and their foundation which has mathematical
beauty; depict the works of our great scientists like Srinivasa Ramanujan, Sir C.V.
Raman (Nobel Prize for Physics, 1930), Satyendranath Bose, and Nobel Laureates
Rabindranath Tagore (first Indian, for Literature, in 1913), Har Gobind Khorana
(Physiology or Medicine, shared with Robert W. Holley and Marshall W. Nirenberg,
1968), S. Chandrasekhar (Physics, 1983, with Dr. William A. Fowler), Mother
Theresa (Peace, 1979, born in Skopje, Ottoman Empire), Amartya Sen (Economic
Sciences, 1998), Venkataraman Ramakrishanan (Chemistry, shared with Thomas
A. Steitz and Ada Yonath, 2009), Kailash Satyarthi (Peace, shared with Malala
Yousafzai, 2014), Abhijit Banerjee (Economic Sciences, shared with Esther Duo, his
wife and Michael Kremer, 2019). The Museum should collect and collate artefacts
and memorabilia of great scientists of India or of Indian origin, who brought credit
to the nation by their discoveries and achievements. And, needless to say, the
Museum will be a source of inspiration and will instill a sense of pride and kindle
the urge to a better understanding of nature through sciences in the visitor.

Chennai, India K. Srinivasa Rao

August 2020
Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges gratefully the following:

The Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, for the Ramanujan
Card Catalogue in the Wren Library; Cambridge University Press for quotations
from the Collected Papers of Srinivasa Ramanujan (1927), Ramanujan: Twelve
Lectures on Subjects Suggested by His Life and Work by G.H. Hardy (1940) and A
Mathematician’s Apology by G.H. Hardy (1967); the Indian Academy of Sciences
for the quotations from the Pathrika and the Academic Press for the remarks of Dr.
S. Chandrasekhar on Ramanujan.
The author thanks Mr. P. Ramkumar, Secretary, and Mr. C. S. Parthasarathy,
Director, of the Board of Management of the Muthialpet Higher Secondary School
for graciously granting permission for use of photos compiled in the publication:
Ramanujan: Letters & Reminiscences, Memorial Number, Volume 1, Edited by
P.K. Srinivasan, M.Ed., The Muthialpet High School, Number Friends Society, Old
Boys’ Committee, Madras-1 (1968).
The author places on record his thanks to the Board of Governors and Directors,
of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, especially Founder Director, Prof. Alladi
Ramakrishnan, and his successors Prof. E.C.G. Sudarshan, Prof. R. Ramachandran,
Prof. R. Balasubramanian and Prof. K. Arvind, all his former colleagues, including
his collaborators in research Prof. K. Ananthanarayanan, Prof. R. Jagannathan, Prof.
R. Parthasarathy, Prof. V. Rajeswari, Prof. T.S. Santhanam, Prof. R. Sridhar, and
Prof. A. Sundaram (who retired from the Agricultural University, Madurai).
I am grateful to Prof. Bruce C. Berndt for sending me copies of the books:
Ramanujan Revisited (Ed. vol.), The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius
Ramanujan by Robert Kanigel; his Ramanujan Notebooks, Part III and Ramanujan:
Letters and Commentary edited by him and Robert A. Rankin and for innumerable
correspondences on various aspects concerning Ramanujan including the Foreword
to a book of mine in 1998, over the past decades.
I am also grateful to Prof. Richard Askey, Prof. George Andrews, Prof. Subrah-
manyan Chandrasekhar and his sister Mrs. Savithri, Prof. Richard Dalitz (on his
visit in March 1986 to IMSc), for their enthusiasm to share information with me on
topics of mutual interest.

xv
xvi Acknowledgements

To my journalist friend Mr. Airavatham Ranganathan, I am indebted for many

stimulating conversations, discussions and motivation to get copies of two letters
from Dr. S. Chandrasekhar to the Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and the latter’s
reply from the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. Mr. C.A. Reddi’s
efforts in getting the papers on Ramanujan from the Tamil Nadu Archives, and it
was his persuasion which made me visit the National Archives in New Delhi and
the Wren Library of Trinity College, Cambridge. I am thankful to Prof. Rankin for
his spontaneity in writing to Dr. David McKitterick, Librarian at the Wren Library,
and getting for me a Reader’s Table at the Wren Library for two days in October
1995.
I wish to place on record my heartfelt thanks to Dr. R. Chidambaram, for
encouragement throughout my career, when he was on the Board of Governors of
IMSc, and later when he was the Chairman of the DAE, and more recently Principal
Scientific Advisor to the Government of India, but for whom the life-size Bronze
statue for Ramanujan (sculpted by K.G. Ravi, a student of Mani Nagappa, whom
I approached with the opening sentence, that I am the son of Mr. Vallabheswar
Rao, which made him say “How can I forget your father, Sir?”, since my father
was his Legal Advisor) at the entrance to the Society for Electronic Transactions
and Security (SETS), in 2010, would not have become a Dream come true! In this
context, I wish to acknowledge the help of Mr. S. Thiagarajan, former Registrar of
SETS and its Executive Director M.S. Vijayaraghavan.
I am indebted to Dr. V.S. Ramamurthy, Secretary DST, Director of and now
Emeritus Professor at the National Institute for Advanced Study, Bengaluru, ever
since our first meeting at the annual Nuclear and Solid State Physics Symposium in
1970, for his encouragement especially for the creation of the πie Pavilion and the
Ramanujan Gallery for the Indian Science Congress Exhibition at the Engineering
College, Guindy, in the Hall for DST (in December–January 1988), followed by
a 2 and a 1/2 year DST CD ROMs Project on the Life and work of Ramanujan
(December 2002–May 2005) at the NMRC of C-DAC, Pune. The website and
the digitization of the Notebooks as a part of the Project was done by the author
as its Principal Investigator. This led to the creation of the first Distinguished
DST-Ramanujan Chair Professorship at the Srinivasa Ramanujan Center, SASTRA
University, where I was encouraged to set and reorganise a Museum for Ramanujan
by its Founder Vice Chancellor Prof. Sethuraman and guided three students for
their Ph.D. thesis. With the continued support of DST, the author was able to set
up a permanent πie Pavilion and the Ramanujan Gallery, thanks to a dynamic
Director of the Science City, Dr. C.K. Gariyali, and the Executive Director, Dr. E.
Sarguru Murthy of Periyar Science and Technology Center, Kotturpuram, Chennai,
first in 1998 and enlarged, more recently into a full-fledged Ramanujan Mathematics
Museum in 2012.

Senior Professor (Retd.), K. Srinivasa Rao

Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Madras
Director (Hon.), Srinivasa Ramanujan Academy of Maths Talent, Chennai
Address: 90/1, Second Main Road, Gandhi Nagar, Adyar, Chennai-600020, India
September 2020.
Contents

1 Life of Srinivasa Ramanujan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.1 Early Years .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Years of Adversity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.3 A Turning Point .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.4 Ramanujan’s First Letter to Hardy .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.5 The Years of Fruition .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.6 Ramanujan’s Medicography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
1.7 Excerpt from Records of the Royal Society and F.R.S. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
1.8 The Beginning of the End . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
1.9 Janaki Ramanujan (Janakiammal) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
1.10 Human Qualities .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2 Ramanujan at Cambridge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
2.1 Research Publications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
2.2 On Selected Formulae of Ramanujan .. . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
2.3 Elementary Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
2.4 Highly Composite Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
2.5 Partitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
2.6 Ramanujan’s Congruences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
2.7 Rogers–Ramanujan Identities .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
2.8 An ‘Astonishing’ Theorem .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
2.9 Ramanujan on Elliptic and Modular Functions . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
2.10 Mock Theta Functions .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
2.11 Continued Fractions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
3 Ramanujan’s Mathematics: Further Glimpses . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
3.1 Ramanujan Summation and Ramanujan Sum .. . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
3.2 Arithmetic Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
3.3 Ramanujan’s τ -Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
3.4 Ramanujan’s Notebooks.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
3.5 Resurgence of Interest .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
3.6 A Page from the Second Notebook of Ramanujan .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

xvii
xviii Contents

3.7 Bruce Berndt’s Work on the Notebooks . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

3.8 Ratan P. Agarwal’s Work on the Notebooks.. . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
3.9 Dyson on Ramanujan’s Notebooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
3.10 CD ROMs on the Life and Work of Ramanujan .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
4 Hardy on Ramanujan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
4.1 Ramanujan Discovers Hardy .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
4.2 Hardy: A Brief Biography .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
4.3 Hardy’s Collaborations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
4.4 The Hardy-Ramanujan Collaboration: Pros and Cons .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
4.5 Hardy’s Lectures on Ramanujan’s Work . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
4.6 Ramanujan’s Work on Hypergeometric Series . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
5 Ramanujan and Hypergeometric Series. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
5.1 A Few Illustrative Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
5.2 In the Notebooks of Ramanujan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
5.3 An Entry in Ramanujan’s Notebook .. . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
5.4 A New Summation Theorem and its Proof .. . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
6 Chandrasekhar (Chandra) and Ramanujan .. . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
6.1 S. Chandrasekhar: Nobel Laureate .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
6.2 Chandrasekhar on Ramanujan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
6.3 The Passport Photograph of Ramanujan .. . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
6.4 A Remarkable Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
6.5 Sources for the Books on Ramanujan . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
6.6 The Centenary Year, 1987: Ramanujan Revisited. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
7 Books on Ramanujan and Busts of Ramanujan .. . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
7.1 S.R. Ranganathan’s Biography (1967).. . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
7.2 Robert Kanigel’s The Man Who Knew Infinity . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
7.3 Review of Ramanujan: Letters and Commentary by
Berndt and Rankin .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
7.4 Busts of Ramanujan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
7.4.1 On the Temple Tower of BITS, Pilani . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
7.4.2 Bust Made by Paul Granlund . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
7.4.3 Bust Made by N. Masilamani .. . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
7.4.4 Bronze Statue in Ramanujan IT City by K. G. Ravi . . . . . . . . . 195
7.5 The Notebooks of Ramanujan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
7.6 The Wren Library .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
8 Ramanujan Birth Anniversaries and Documentaries
on Ramanujan .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
8.1 The 75th Birth Anniversary of Ramanujan .. . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
8.2 Notebooks of Ramanujan and Their Accessibility .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
8.3 Awareness Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
8.4 Promising Prospects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
8.5 Video Programmes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
Contents xix

8.6 Ira Hauptman’s Partition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211

8.7 Web Sites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
8.8 The ISC, πie Pavilion and Ramanujan Exhibitions.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
9 Relevance of Ramanujan Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
9.1 Contents of the CD ROMs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
9.2 Birth Centenary of Ramanujan (1987).. . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
9.3 ICM 2010 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
9.4 The Author’s Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
9.5 A Plea for a National Science Museum.. . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228

A Research Publications of Ramanujan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231

B Wren Library Card Catalogue and Papers of Ramanujan . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
C Personal File of S. Ramanujan at the National Archives and
Papers at the Tamilnadu Archives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
References .. .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Notes .. . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
Index . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
About the Author

K. Srinivasa Rao, former Senior Professor, IMSc, is Director (Honorary) of

the Srinivasa Ramanujan Academy of Maths Talent (SRAMT), Chennai, India.
Earlier, he served as Senior Professor of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences
(IMSc), Chennai, India, which he joined in 1964 as a research trainee with an
M.Sc. (Physics) from the University of Madras, India. He completed his Ph.D.
in theoretical nuclear physics at the IMSc, Chennai, India, in 1972, under the
supervision of Prof. Alladi Ramakrishnan. His research areas include quantum
theory of angular momentum, special functions and orthogonal polynomials, group
theory, numerical analysis and computational physics. His research papers have
been published in various national and international journals of repute. He is
the editor and author of a number of books, including Srinivasa Ramanujan:
A Mathematical Genius (1998, 2004), Quantum Theory of Angular Momentum:
Selected Topics (1993) and Introduction to Computers and Programming (1974). He
was an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellow, a recipient of the Ramanujan
Award of the Ramanujan Mathematics Academy and Mathematics Library (2013),
awarded in recognition of his research on Gauss, Ramanujan and Hypergeometric
Series and Life and Works of Ramanujan; the Tamil Nadu National Science
Academy Award (TANSA 2000) for Mathematical Sciences; the TANSA 2000
Award for Popularisation of Science; and the Lifetime Achievement Award of
SRAMT, Chennai.

xxi
Chapter 1
Life of Srinivasa Ramanujan

Srinivasa Ramanujan,1 the brilliant twentieth-century Indian mathematician, has

been compared with all-time greats Leonhard Euler,2 Carl Friedrich Gauss3 and
Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi,4 for his natural mathematical genius.
It may be impossible to define who a mathematical genius is, or, genius for that
matter. But that does not prevent us from recognizing the work of a genius, for the
rarest of the rare—like the Himalayan peaks or the Niagara falls—stand out in any
field of human activity.
Despite his short lifespan of 32 years, 4 months and 4 days, Ramanujan has
left behind an incredibly vast and formidable amount of original work, which has
greatly influenced the development and growth of some of the best research work in
mathematics of the twentieth century.
If we call Euler and Gauss as mathematicians who were the most outstanding in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to which they belonged, then Ramanujan
is undoubtedly an outstanding mathematician of the twentieth century, whose work
continues to be relevant in the new millennium.5

1 Srinivasa Ramanujan, Dec. 22, 1887–April 26, 1920.

2 Leonhard Euler, April 15, 1707–September 18, 1783.
3 Carl Friedrich Gauss, April 30, 1777–February 23, 1855.
4 Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi, December 10, 1804–February 18, 1851.
5 “Relevance of Srinivasa Ramanujan at the Dawn of the New Millennium”, K. Srinivasa Rao,

(2002) in A.K. Agarwal, B.C. Berndt, C.F. Krattenthaler, G.L. Mullen, K. Ramachandra, M.
Waldschmidt (eds), Number Theory and Discrete Mathematics, Hindustan Book Agency, Gurgaon
(2002) 261–268.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 1
K. Srinivasa Rao, Srinivasa Ramanujan,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0447-8_1
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