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22/12/22 21:58 PM IST

National Mathematics Day 2022

In News
  • National Mathematics Day is celebrated on December 22 across the nation every year.
History
  • The day was announced on 26 February 2012 by the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to mark the 125th anniversary of the birth of the Indian mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan (22 Dec 1887- 26 Apr 1920).
  • 2012 was also observed as National Mathematics Year.
  • Ramanujan had a wealth of ideas that have transformed and reshaped 20th-century mathematics.
  • These ideas continue to shape the mathematics of the 21st century.
Srinivasa Ramanujan
  • Srinivasa Ramanujan was born on December 22, 1887, in Tamil Nadu’s Erode to a Brahmin Iyengar family. He had developed a liking for mathematics at a very young age, mastering trigonometry at 12 and was eligible for a scholarship at the Government Arts College in Kumbakonam.
  • He studied at the Government College in Kumbakonam in 1903. Due to his dislike for non-mathematical subjects, he failed exams there. He had enrolled in Madras’ Pachaiyappa College at the age of 14.
  • In 1912, Ramanujan started working as a clerk in the Madras Port Trust. There, his mathematical genius was recognised by some of his colleagues and one of them referred him to Professor GH Hardy of Trinity College, Cambridge University. He met Hardy in 1913, after which he went to Trinity College.
  • In 1916, Ramanujan received his Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree. He went on to publish several papers on his subject with Hardy’s help. The two even collaborated on several joint projects.
  • Ramanujan was elected to the London Mathematical Society in 1917. Next year, he was elected to the prestigious Royal Society for his research on Elliptic Functions and theory of numbers. He was also the first Indian to be elected a Fellow of the Trinity College.
  • He also made notable contributions like the hypergeometric series, the Riemann series, the elliptic integrals, the theory of divergent series, and the functional equations of the zeta function. He is said to have discovered his own theorems and independently compiled 3,900 results.
  • In 1919, Ramanujan returned to India. A year later, on April 26, he breathed his last owing to deteriorating health. He was just 32 years old. His biography ‘The Man Who Knew Infinity’ by Robert Kanigel depicts his life and journey to fame.
  • A film of the same name was released in 2015 in which British-Indian actor Dev Patel played Ramanujan. The 2015 movie ‘The Man Who Knew Infinity” was released based on Srinivasa Ramanujan’s biography. The film shed light on Ramanujan’s childhood in India, his time in Britain, and his journey to becoming the great mathematician.
Ramanujan number
  • 1729 is known as the Ramanujan number.
  • It is the smallest number which can be expressed as the sum of two different cubes in two different ways.
  • 1729 is the sum of the cubes of 10 and 9 - cube of 10 is 1000 and cube of 9 is 729 adding the two numbers results in 1729.
  • 1729 is also the sum of the cubes of 12 and 1, cube of 12 is 1728 and cube of 1 is 1 adding the two results in 1729.
Source- PIB

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