Ramanujan  (English, Hardcover, Ranganathan S. R.)

S. R. Ranganathan tells the story of a man whose mathematical prowess has yet to be challenged in Ramanujan: The Man & The Mathematician, a biography of Srinivasa Ramanujan.

Summary of the Book

When India still quelled under the grip of the British Raj, a young boy was born in Erode, in the Madras Presidency. India had yet to touch upon the mathematical progress of the West, for it was too focused in its freedom struggle. The boy would change the way the world looked at Indian mathematicians forever. By the time he was twelve, he taught himself trigonometry from a copy of S. L. Loney’s book on trigonometry. He slowly began to derive theorems in mathematics without external advice, rediscovering the groundbreaking theorems of masters before him. He arrived at Euler’s Identity without any sort of formal education, let alone an actual mathematics degree. At the age of seventeen, he’d studied the Bernoulli numbers and discovered the Euler–Mascheroni constant independently. He won a scholarship to study at Kumbakonam’s government college, but dropped out a year later after failing all the other subjects. However, his skill at mathematics made him a formidable figure. Perhaps fate ordained that his entire intellect was to be focused solely on mathematics, as if to fulfill some great necessity. His work won the attention of the the President of the Indian Mathematical Society who passed them on to three mathematicians at the University of Cambridge. Ramanujan went to Cambridge, becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. However, like the speed with which his intellect grew, his life seemed to veer towards a halt.  At the age of 32, he left behind nearly 3900 identities, equations and other results which he compiled independently. His story serves as a legacy that has never been matched before or since. This book gives readers a detailed account of his life and times, and the achievements which have made the name Srinivasa Ramanujan one of the greatest names in the history of mathematics.

About S. R. Ranganathan

Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan was an Indian mathematician and librarian. He is known for the five laws of library science and the colon classification system. He was the professor of library science at Benares Hindu University during the time of the Independence, and a professor of library science at the University of Delhi after that.