National Mathematics Day 2021: December 22 is celebrated as National Mathematics Day to commemorate the birth anniversary of one of the brilliant minds of the country, Srinivasa Ramanujan. The self-taught genius was born on December 22, 1887, in a small village of Erode in Madras Presidency, British India. The day marks the importance of mathematics in the development of our nation and honours the amazing works of Srinivas Ramanujan.
Here are some interesting facts and quotes to remember the mathematical genius:
Ramanujan used to solve Loney’s Trigonometry exercises at the age of 13, without any help.
He never had any school friends because his peers were intimidated by his mathematical genius.
He failed to get a degree since he could not crack the non-mathematical subjects.
He was the second Indian to be honoured with the Fellow of the Royal Society in 1918. The first was Ardaseer Cursetjee, a marine engineer.
Ramanujan used to claim that throughout his lifetime, a Hindu goddess called Namakkal used to give him equations and theories to prove, which he used to solve when awake.
Quotes:
Mathematics was equivalent to God for Ramanujan, and the equations were like thoughts of the Almighty. He had said: “An equation means nothing to me unless it expresses a thought of God.”
A spontaneous genius, he quickly thought of an interesting way to defend the number 1729, which G.H Hardy thought was dull.
1729 = 13 + 123 = 93 + 103
He said: “No, it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as a sum of two cubes in two different ways.”
In a letter to G.H Hardy, he put his genius in words too.
“I beg to introduce myself to you as a clerk in the Accounts Department of the Port Trust Office at Madras…After leaving school, I have been employing the spare time at my disposal to work at Mathematics.”
