(13) Ramanujan: The Man who treated numbers like his pets.
Pankaj Khanna
9424810575
Previous/Next Blog Posts:
(1) Beauty Squarely Introduction & Kuber Yantra
(2) Murphy Radio!? अले वाह!! My first Experience of Magic Square.
(3) Decoding the Quadratum Mirabile! How to solve 3x3 Magic Squares.
(4) Lo Shu Square History of Chinese Magic Square.
(5) The Unhurried Odyssey of a Turtle!! History of Magic Squares in short.
Brief Introduction.
(7) Khajuraho Magic: Introduction.
(8) Chautisa Yantra: Mytho-math Spice.
(9) Dürer Square
(11) Tona Lisa as a Rock Star!
(13) Ramanujan: The Man Who Treated Numbers Like Pets.
Srinivas Ramanujan 1887-1920
Bust of Ramanujan in the garden of Birla Industrial & Technological Museum in Kolkata, India.
Today, on National Mathematics Day—December 22, 2025—we celebrate the birth anniversary of the great Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, a man for whom numbers were not mere symbols on paper, but living companions—whispering to him the hidden secrets of infinity.
Before we step into the delightful world of Ramanujan’s Birthdate Magic Square, let us pause for a moment to meet the mind behind the magic—the self-taught genius Srinivasa Ramanujan, whose equations continue to astonish and inspire mathematicians even a century later.
If you’ve ever stared at a math problem and felt your brain curdling—(हिंदी में, दिमाग का दही होना!)—meet Srinivasa Ramanujan, a man who looked at equations the way a Tawa-Bhaji chef looks at onions: with swagger, excitement, and absolutely no fear of tears!
Born in 1887 in Kumbakonam ( A historic temple city in the Thanjavur district of Tamil Nadu, nestled between the Kaveri and Arasalar rivers); he grew up surrounded by temples, Coffee, and an unstoppable urge to scribble formulas everywhere except where teachers wanted him to!
By age 13, Ramanujan wasn’t solving math problems anymore; he was manufacturing his own. Textbooks trembled. Teachers sighed. And his classmates quietly prayed he wouldn’t ask them to “verify this cute identity I just found.”
He filled his notebooks with thousands of dazzling results—many written without proofs. Proofs, to him, were optional, much like chutney with his staple diet of idli–sambar: delightful on the side, but never essential to the meal.
He wrote to the famed Cambridge mathematician G. H. Hardy, casually sprinkling his letter with equations that felt less like human work and more like leaks from God’s private mathematics diary—a cosmic upgrade of the famous Hindi-film Don’s लाल डायरी!
Hardy took one look and essentially said, “This fellow is either a genius or a wizard—probably both.” Thus began one of history’s greatest long-distance friendships, eventually upgraded to an in-person collaboration when Ramanujan sailed to England with little more than faith and notebooks brimming with formulas.
Ramanujan introduced Hardy to the idea that intuition could be so sharp, it might as well be 'Wi-Fi' connected to the God's Universe!
Together they produced dazzling results, including the famous 1729 taxi story, proving once and for all that even boring cab numbers can become celebrities.
Ramanujan returned to India in 1919 and left the world a year later—far too soon at the age of 32, but after gifting mathematics enough magic to last a millennium at least.
The Indian government marked his 75th birth anniversary in 1962 with a commemorative postal stamp, letting envelopes and letters carry an icon of mathematics along with them..
His life teaches one thing for sure: When numbers love you back, miracles happen!
This blog post is written in the fond hope that a few more curious minds will wander into the wonderfully strange world of Srinivasa Ramanujan—his mathematics, his life, and his delightful defiance of convention.
If your curiosity refuses to stop there (a common side-effect), do explore the detailed Wikipedia page on him, and also read this insightful article published in The Hindu in July 2024.
A gentle Warning: prolonged exposure to his maths may permanently raise your standards for genius! I mean to say, read more about Ramanujan at your own risk — your benchmark for mathematical greatness may permanently shift upward!
In the next blog post, we pause from stories and step into symbols, tracing his contributions to mathematics in a concise note—just enough to leave you wanting more!
Pankaj Khanna
9424810575
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मेरे कुछ अन्य ब्लॉग:
हिन्दी में:
तवा संगीत : ग्रामोफोन का संगीत और कुछ किस्सागोई।
रेल संगीत: रेल और रेल पर बने हिंदी गानों के बारे में।
साइकल संगीत: साइकल पर आधारित हिंदी गाने।
कुछ भी: विभिन्न विषयों पर लेख।
तवा भाजी: वन्य भाजियों को बनाने की विधियां!
मालवा का ठिलवा बैंड: पिंचिस का आर्केस्टा!
ईक्षक इंदौरी: इंदौर के पर्यटक स्थल। (लेखन जारी है।)
अंग्रेजी में:
Love Thy Numbers : गणित में रुचि रखने वालों के लिए।
Epeolatry: अंग्रेजी भाषा में रुचि रखने वालों के लिए।
CAT-a-LOG: CAT-IIM कोचिंग।छात्र और पालक सभी पढ़ें।
Corruption in Oil Companies: HPCL के बारे में जहां 1984 से 2007 तक काम किया।
