"I beg to introduce myself to you as a clerk in the Accounts Department of the Port Trust Office at Madras... "
The opening of the letter that changed 20th century Mathematics forever!

Today is 100th death anniversary of Srinivasa Ramanujan.

Thread by @insomniacnomad
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He died 26th April 1920 after a prolonged illness. But what significance does 100 have for a man who knew Infinity.

Ramanujan once famously said "An equation means nothing to me unless it expresses a thought of God".
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With this one sentence, he has etched out the most glorious connection between Mathematics and Spirituality, the most unique in all of Mathematics. Religious nutjobs will quote this statement to prove existence of "God" that they have in mind and pursue their own agenda...
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but it was highlighting the ever-present and continuous tradition of thousand years of spiritual beings trying to discover the concept of God through Mathematics starting from Aryabhatta, Bhaskara, Brahmgupta to Kerala school of Mathematics geniuses in Madhava of Sangamagrama
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Parmeshvara, Neelkanta Somayaji, Jyesthdeva, Pisharati, Bhattathiri & Panikkar.

E. T.Bell in his famous book "Men of Mathematics" which was published as a comprehensive book about Mathematicians till end of 19th century has written-
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"For sheer manipulative ability in tangled Algebra, Euler and Jacobi have had no rival, unless it be the Indian mathematical genius, Srinivasa Ramanujan, in our own century. Hardy's personal ratings of mathematician rated on pure mathematical talent gave himself 25,
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Littlewood 30, Hilbert 80 and Ramanujan 100. Ramanujan revolutionized many new areas of Mathematics and the mathematicians have taken to his mathematics like duck in waters. Prof Atle Selberg once remarked,
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"It will take many more decades, possibly even more than a century to completely understand Ramanujan's contributions. And Freeman Dyson remarked "We should be grateful to Ramanujan not only for discovering so much but also for providing others plenty to discover !"
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That is Ramanujan's biggest legacy.

Ramanujan was not familiar with European Mathematics going on in Europe and America at his time. He had accidently found G.S.Carr's "A synopsis of Elementary results in Pure Mathematics".
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This book greatly influenced his style of mathematics in later years. Since he was disconnected with most of contemporary Mathematics happening, he almost single handedly discovered almost 200 years of Mathematics.
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But when he found out that his discoveries have already been discovered by others before him, he was so ashamed that he tried to hide it on roof of his house.

Taxicab number 1729 is almost synonymous with Ramanujan and the story is known to all.
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What is not known to the world is that he knew 1729 very well because he was trying to prove Fermat's last theorem and had discovered a series of numbers that were just near misses of this theorem an + bn = cn by +1/-1 and 1729 was first such number.
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But he was not just a mathematician but more an artist. His mathematical results were as beautiful in appearance as it was astonishing . His work is being used in the most unusual of places like Signal processing and many other practical areas of Science.
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His most amazing "Mock Theta functions" or "Mass-modular forms", written on his deathbed, are being used to study behaviour of Black holes. And he was certainly the master of Infinity, Infinite series and products, only rivalled by Euler.
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His command over Infinity was such that he was able to produce a general solution to each of mathematical problems such that if there was more than one answer to the problem, it would be discovered through Ramanujan's solutions.
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He was obsessed with π and he wrote so many equations to discover the value of π , that a full book can be written about it. The best part of his π equations was that it is the fastest converging series which is being used by Supercomputers
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to calculate record number of digits of π for e.g.-Borwein & Chudnovsky brothers.

Michio Kaku once remarked "Srinivasa Ramanujan was the strangest man in all of mathematics, probably in the entire history of science."
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Probably he himself was a reflection of Infinity, a point of Singularity in human beings’ intelligence. If Universe has only mathematical structure, he was reading Universal language like his mother tongue. Physics and Mathematics always have been in a game of cat and mouse.
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Sometimes Physics discovers properties of Universe for which Mathematics is not ready and new mathematics has to be created. The most prominent example is when Newton discovered laws of planetary motion and he had to invent Calculus to explain it.
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Ramanujan is greatest exponent of other part where Mathematics has been discovered for new Physics that is yet to be discovered.
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Written by dear friend @insomniacnomad

CC: @bhak_sala @TilaiyanCKS @alakhsundaram