On December 22, 1887, Srinivasa Ramanujan was born to a poor family inthe state of Tamil Nadu in South India. From humble and obscurebeginnings, he blossomed into one of the greatest mathematicalgeniuses of all time. Largely self-taught and cut off from much ofthe current mathematical work of his time, he nevertheless producedobservations and results that continue to dazzle.
This year, the world is celebrating the 125th anniversary of the birthof Ramanujan. To mark this occasion, the NOTICES OF THE AMS ispublishing "Srinivasa Ramanujan: Going Strong at 125", a collection ofarticles by top experts that discuss Ramanujan's legacy and its impacton current mathematics. The articles will appear in two installments,the first in the December 2012 issue of the Notices (to be postedonline on November 13, 2012), and the second in the January 2013 issue(to be posted online on December 6, 2012). The Notices is freelyavailable without subscription at http://www.ams.org/notices.
Ramanujan had an intimate familiarity with numbers that seems to havestemmed from his awe-inspiring ability to calculate with them. Thisability gave him a profound understanding of numbers and theirrelationships. The famous story about the "taxicab number"exemplifies this familiarity. At the invitation of the mathematicianG.H. Hardy, Ramanujan visited Cambridge, England, in 1914 and livedthere for several years. Once when Hardy traveled by taxicab to pay avisit to Ramanujan, he remarked that the cab had had a very dullnumber, 1729. "No", Hardy recalled Ramanujan as replying, "it is avery interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as thesum of two cubes in two different ways."
Ramanujan's contributions to mathematics were cut short by hisuntimely death in 1920, when he was just 32. He left behind severalnotebooks in which he recorded his findings, and these have been awellspring of mathematical activity. Several world-classmathematicians have devoted much of their careers to understanding thematerial in the notebooks. As a result, Ramanujan's impact inmathematics has continued to grow over the years.
Today an annual conference on Ramanujan's work is held in hishometown, and three prizes and a research journal are named after him.His personality and achievements have captured the imagination of thegeneral public. The definitive biography of Ramanujan, "The Man WhoKnew Infinity", by Robert Kanigel, appeared in 1991, and a novelizedtreatment of his relationship with Hardy, "The Indian Clerk" by DavidLeavitt, was published in 2007. Movies and plays have also appeared,including a documentary called "Letters from an Indian Clerk",produced for the Equinox science series in 1987; the documentary wasrecently posted on Youtube athttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OARGZ1xXCxs.
Source: American Mathematical Society