Google homepage honours Indian mathematician Ramanujan with a doodle

22 December, 2012

Today is National Mathematics Day marking the birth anniversary of great Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920). Google's homepage, today, is celebrating the 125th birth anniversary of India's best known mathematician Ramanujan with a doodle, which depicts mathematical theorems in the letters of the word Google being written by a child.

INDIAN MATHEMATICIAN Ramanujan, born on December 22 1887 in Erode, Tamil Nadu, was self-taught and had an uncanny manipulative ability for numbers. As it is well known, he was unable to pass his school examinations and worked as a clerk in Madras to make his two ends meet.

However, he continued to pursue his own mathematics of numbers and G. H. Hardy recognized Ramanujan's mathematical insights and arranged for him to come to Cambridge. He was impressed by Ramanujan's intimate and intutive ability to deal with numbers. Consequently, he made significant contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions.

In his lifetime, Ramanujan put together nearly 3900 results - most of them focussing on equations and identities, and almost all his claims have now been proven correct, reported The Times of India.

In India, 22 December has been marked to be celebrated every year as National Mathematics Day, and also this year was observed as the National Mathematical Year.