Srinivasa Ramanujan
1887–1920 · Indian · Early Modern
Known for: Self-taught mathematical genius who made extraordinary contributions to number theory
Srinivasa Ramanujan was one of the most extraordinary mathematical minds in history—almost entirely self-taught, growing up in poverty in Tamil Nadu, India. He produced results that stunned the greatest mathematicians of his era. His notebooks, filled with thousands of unproven results, are still being explored a century later.
He traveled to Cambridge to work with G.H. Hardy but suffered terribly from the cold climate and malnutrition. He contracted tuberculosis and died at 32. His legacy includes the Hardy-Ramanujan number (1729—'the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways') and entire fields of mathematics.
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