Portal:India/Today's selected article/April 7, 2006

Srinivasa Aiyangar Ramanujan was a world-renowned Indian mathematician. Nicknamed as "the man who knew infinity", who had uncanny mathematical manipulative abilities. He excelled in number theory and modular functions. He made significant contributions to the development of partition functions and summation formulas involving &pi;. A child prodigy, he was largely self-taught in mathematics and had compiled over 3,000 theorems by the year 1914 when he moved to Cambridge. Often, his formulas were stated without proof and were only later proven to be true. In 1997 the Ramanujan Journal was launched to publish work "in areas of mathematics influenced by Ramanujan". Not only did he achieve merit certificates and academic awards throughout his school years, but was also assisting the school in the logistics of assigning its 1200 students to its 35-odd teachers, completing mathematical exams in half the allotted time, and already showing familiarity with infinite series. (more...)