The great Indian mathematician from 20th century, Srinivasa Ramanujan was a genius! I can’t have enough of him and hence I read, collect and share anecdotes and stories of his greatness whenever I get an opportunity.
You can read previous posts about Srinivasa Ramanujan here.
Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920) was born on this day (22nd December). He was a genius who taught himself advanced mathematics and did in a short life span of 32 years some great work which went on to become foundation of many ground breaking inventions and discoveries which we experience and use everyday.
He came up with some fascinating and aesthetically beautiful equations which are impossible to grasp even for a respectable mathematician. In fact, when Prof Hardy saw Ramanujan’s notebook he felt that those equations “[Those equations] must be true, because if they were not true, no one would have the imagination to invent them”!
Here is an example of Ramanujan’s genius which I read about recently. And it’s about Pi.
Here is a description of Pi given by Ramanujan 100+ years ago.
“Add the square roots of 72, 80 and 90. Add 10 to that total. Of the result, take the natural logarithm (“ln” function in calculator). Multiply by 12. Divide the result by the square root of 190.”
What you get as answer is Pi’s value till 18 digits! Isn’t it amazing? It is humanly impossible to come up with such equation in early 20th century for a person who didn’t have a degree in mathematics and taught himself!
Here is one more. He also gave a simplified approximation of the above.
“Divide 9801by 1103. Divide the result by square root of 8”.
This gives correct value of Pi till 6 digits.
Happy B’day Srinivasa Ramanujan!
ekoshapu 
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