Srinivasa Ramanujan
Discover the true story of Srinivasa Ramanujan, the boy from a small town in South India who saw magic in numbers.
Little Ramanujan was born in Erode and grew up in Kumbakonam, beside a big temple and a wide river. He loved numbers more than anything, and because paper cost money, he did his sums on a slate and rubbed them out with his elbow to start again. He left college without a degree, but he never stopped doing maths, filling notebook after notebook with his discoveries.
In 1913 he wrote a brave letter to the mathematician G. H. Hardy in England, and was invited to Cambridge. There the two worked side by side, and Ramanujan was made a Fellow of the Royal Society, one of the first Indians ever chosen. His notebooks are still studied today, and his birthday is National Mathematics Day in India.
The book ends with "What Ramanujan taught us": six lessons from his life, each beside the moment it comes from, for grown-ups and children to talk about together.
Atlas Of Greats is a series of true picture-book biographies of the world's greats, for ages 3 to 7. Each book follows one person from childhood, in short pages made for reading aloud.
Specs
- Format
- Digital PDF, 32 pages
- Size
- 8.5 × 8.5 in
- Ages
- 3 to 7
Facts for kids
- Ramanujan was born on 22 December 1887 in Erode, in Tamil Nadu.
- As a teenager he learned from one thick maths book that listed thousands of results, one after another.
- In his short life he wrote down almost 3,900 results, and mathematicians are still studying them today.
- 1729 is now called the Hardy–Ramanujan number: 1729 = 1×1×1 + 12×12×12, and also 9×9×9 + 10×10×10.
- India has celebrated National Mathematics Day on his birthday since 2012.
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