National Mathematics Day is celebrated every year on December 22 across the nation to recognise and celebrate the works of Srinivasa Ramanujan. Born in Erode in 1887, S. Ramanujan went on to become a world renowned mathematician.
Srinivasa Ramanujan, who is also known as the ‘man who knew infinity’, did not receive any formal education in Mathematics but made important contributions to the field of mathematics. His life was an awe inspiring journey that not only unravelled many mathematical principals but placed him squarely among the greatest minds of all times. The most remarkable fact about Ramanujan was that he failed in all other subjects barring mathematics. Among the most important contributions were to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions. His work on Ramanujan prime, the Ramanujan theta function, partition formulae and mock theta functions continue to open new areas of research. The most famous are Ramanujan Number- also called the magic number which is 1729. It is the smallest number that can be expressed as a sum of cubes of two different sets of numbers. The great mathematician, however, was riddled with ill health all his life. The world lost the great mathematician at a young age of 32 in 1920.
The former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, on February 26, 2012, declared December 22 as the National Mathematics Day to mark the mathematician’s birth anniversary. The National Mathematics Day is celebrated across the country with several educational events in schools and colleges.
