A demonstration record, compiled from public archives. Srinivasa Ramanujan did not write it; the institutions cited here did. Sources and clearance →
1887 to 1920
The record of Srinivasa Ramanujan, mathematician: a clerk in the accounts section of the Madras Port Trust, elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 2 May 1918.
Born on 22 December 1887 at Erode in what is now Tamil Nadu, he entered the Town High School in Kumbakonam in January 1898 and was given a scholarship to the Government College in Kumbakonam, which he entered in 1904; the scholarship, MacTutor records, was "not renewed because Ramanujan devoted more and more of his time to mathematics and neglected his other subjects". He attended Pachaiyappa's College in 1906 and sat the First Arts examination, at which MacTutor records that he "failed all his other subjects". His application for the Madras Port Trust post carried a reference from E W Middlemast reading "He is a young man of quite exceptional capacity in mathematics and especially in work relating to numbers. He has a natural aptitude for computation and is very quick at figure work", and the duties of the clerkship began on 1 March 1912. The mathematics was in print before Cambridge had heard of it: the first item in the 1927 Collected Papers is "Some properties of Bernoulli's numbers", Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society, volume 3 (1911), pages 219 to 234. On 16 January 1913 he wrote to G H Hardy, and the 1927 Collected Papers records that the papers enclosed with that letter "contained the enunciations of a hundred or more mathematical theorems". He sailed from India on 17 March 1914, arrived in London on 14 April 1914, moved into rooms at Trinity College on 30 April, and graduated Bachelor of Arts by Research on 16 March 1916. The Royal Society elected him a Fellow on 2 May 1918, on a certificate that describes him as "Research Student in Mathematics. Distinguished as a pure mathematician, particularly for his investigations in elliptic functions and the theory of numbers".
Printed in the Messenger of Mathematics, Volume 44, Cambridge, pages 10 to 18, under the name S. Ramanujan. The University of Toronto copy is digitized in full; the Internet Archive records its copyright status as not in copyright, on evidence of no visible notice and a stated date of 1915.
University of Toronto Libraries, Gerstein Science Information Centre; digitized by the Internet Archive. NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT
The first item in the 1927 Collected Papers: Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society, volume 3 (1911), pages 219 to 234, printed two years before the letter to Hardy.
Written with G H Hardy. Listed in the 1927 Collected Papers as Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, series 2, volume 17 (1918), pages 76 to 115.
Edited by G H Hardy, P V Seshu Aiyar and B M Wilson, Cambridge at the University Press, with notes and extracts from Ramanujan's letters to Hardy.
1919 to 1920
Loose sheets holding much of the research completed in the last two years of his life, held at Trinity College Library, Cambridge, where one sheet is catalogued as Add Ms a/94/15/65.
| 1912 to 1914 | Clerk, accounts section, Madras Port TrustAppointed on an application carrying E W Middlemast's written reference; duties began on 1 March 1912. |
| 16 January 1913 | Letter to G H HardyOpens "I beg to introduce myself to you as a clerk in the Accounts Department of the Port Trust Office at Madras on a salary of only £20 per annum". The 1927 Collected Papers records that the enclosure "contained the enunciations of a hundred or more mathematical theorems". |
| 1914 | Arrival in EnglandSailed from India on 17 March 1914, arrived in London on 14 April 1914, and moved into rooms at Trinity College on 30 April. |
| 2 May 1918 | Fellow of the Royal SocietyElection certificate EC/1918/18, proposed by "G H Hardy; P A MacMahon; J H Grace; Joseph Larmor; T J I'A Bromwich; E W Hobson; H F Baker; J E Littlewood; J W Nicholson; W H Young; E T Whittaker; A R Forsyth; A N Whitehead". |
| October 1918 | Fellow of Trinity College, CambridgeTrinity College Library records that in October 1918 he "was the first Indian to be appointed as a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge". |
| 1919 | Return to IndiaSailed for India on 27 February 1919, arriving on 13 March. |
| 1920 | Death at KumbakonamDied on 26 April 1920, aged 32. |
| 1976 | The lost notebook identified at the Wren LibraryTrinity College Library records that "in 1976 a visiting researcher to the Wren Library named George Andrews sent waves of excitement across the mathematical world when he re-discovered around 138 sheets of paper among the effects of G.N. Watson". |
| £20 per annum | The salary given for the Port Trust clerkship in the letter of 16 January 1913, which names it "a salary of only £20 per annum". |
| 100 or more theorems | The 1927 Collected Papers records that the papers enclosed with the first letter "contained the enunciations of a hundred or more mathematical theorems". |
| 2 notebooks | Hardy's notice in the 1927 Collected Papers describes him "jotting down his results in two good-sized notebooks". |
| 138 sheets | Trinity College Library gives the lost notebook as "around 138 sheets of paper", re-discovered in 1976 among the effects of G N Watson. |
| Over 600 formulae | Trinity College Library records the formulae in the lost notebook, "over six hundred in total", as having been set down without proofs. |
"I beg to introduce myself to you as a clerk in the Accounts Department of the Port Trust Office at Madras on a salary of only £20 per annum. I am now about 23 years of age. I have had no University education but I have undergone the ordinary school course." The opening of the letter, printed at page xxiii of the Collected Papers of Srinivasa Ramanujan, Cambridge University Press, 1927. Read at the page image of the digitised copy contributed by Kerala State Library.
"I have not trodden through the conventional regular course which is followed in a University course, but I am striking out a new path for myself." Four lines further into the same letter, at page xxiii of the Collected Papers of Srinivasa Ramanujan, Cambridge University Press, 1927. Read at the page image of the digitised copy contributed by Kerala State Library.
A clerk in the accounts section of the Madras Port Trust, appointed on an application carrying E W Middlemast's reference, with duties beginning on 1 March 1912.
In the letter material MacTutor quotes: "I have had no university education but I have undergone the ordinary school course. After leaving school I have been employing the spare time at my disposal to work at mathematics."
The certificate of 2 May 1918 records: "Research Student in Mathematics. Distinguished as a pure mathematician, particularly for his investigations in elliptic functions and the theory of numbers."
The biographical notice in the 1927 Collected Papers records that "Ramanujan used to say that the goddess of Namakkal inspired him with the formulae in dreams".
Through G H Hardy's notice in the 1927 Collected Papers: "I remember once going to see him when he was lying ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi-cab No. 1729, and remarked that the number (7.13.19) seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavourable omen: 'No,' he replied, 'it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as a sum of two cubes in two different ways.'"
