A Portrait of Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920)

in #science6 years ago



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Portrait of a fantastic mathematician.

The world has experienced few true geniuses but one of them is Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920): an Indian mathematician. Picture above.

Despite coming from humble beginnings and having no formal education in mathematics, he made incredible contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions, including solutions to mathematical problems considered to be unsolvable.

Trying to gain recognition he showed his work to many mathematicians who disregarded it as too unfamiliar, most of his was completely new and had not been researched before, most of his work came from intuition and weren't proven. Ramanujan was also a religious man and often said that his ideas came to him through his prayers.

One mathematician however recognized his genius, English mathematician G. H. Hardy at the University of Cambridge, invited Ramanujan to discuss his work. In his notes, Ramanujan had produced groundbreaking new theorems, including some that Hardy stated had "defeated [him and his colleagues] completely", in addition to rediscovering recently proven but highly advanced results.

To showcase his genius, here's one of his formulas, an approximation of π.

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Facts from Wikipedia, if you'd like to learn about different formulas and their background, don't hesitate to follow @formulas or check out formulas_for_your_comfort on Instagram.

Any advice is welcomed, just starting out on steemit ! Thanks for making it to the end !