Updated: July 19, 2020
Srinivasa Ramanujan was an Indian mathematician who lived during the British Rule in India. Though he had almost no formal training in pure mathematics, he made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions, including solutions to mathematical problems then considered unsolvable. He was born on 22nd December 1887 and died on 26th April 1920.
Srinivasa Ramanujan was born on 22nd December 1887 into a Tamil Brahmin Iyengar family in Erode, Madras Presidency (now Tamil Nadu), at the residence of his maternal grandparents. His father, Kuppuswamy Srinivasa Iyengar, originally from Thanjavur district, worked as a clerk in a sari shop. His mother, Komalatammal, was a housewife and sang at a local temple. They lived in a small traditional home on Sarangapani Sannidhi Street in the town of Kumbakonam.
On 1 October 1892 Srinivasa Ramanujan was enrolled at the local school. After his maternal grandfather lost his job as a court official in Kanchipuram, Ramanujan and his mother moved back to Kumbakonam and he was enrolled in Kangayan Primary School. When his paternal grandfather died, he was sent back to his maternal grandparents, then living in Madras. He did not like school in Madras, and tried to avoid attending. Just before turning 10, in November 1897, he passed his primary examinations in English, Tamil, geography and arithmetic with the best scores in the district. That year Ramanujan entered Town Higher Secondary School, where he encountered formal mathematics for the first time. When he graduated from Town Higher Secondary School in 1904, Srinivasa Ramanujan was awarded the K. Ranganatha Rao prize for mathematics by the school's headmaster, Krishnaswami Iyer. Iyer introduced Ramanujan as an outstanding student who deserved scores higher than the maximum. He received a scholarship to study at Government Arts College, Kumbakonam. He later enrolled at Pachaiyappa's College in Madras. Without a FA degree, he left college and continued to pursue independent research in mathematics.
On 14th July 1909, Srinivasa Ramanujan married Janaki (Janakiammal), a girl his mother had selected for him a year earlier and who was ten years old when they married. Janaki continued to stay at her maternal home for three years after marriage, till she attained puberty. In 1912 she and Ramanujan's mother joined Ramanujan in Madras.
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