Ramanujan, Srinivasa (1887-1920), was an Indian mathematician. He was born on Dec. 22, 1887, in Erode, near Coimbatore. His mathematical ability and powers of memory were outstanding even as a child. But Ramanujan concentrated so much on mathematics, to the exclusion of other subjects, that he eventually lost his scholarship at Government College in Kumbakonam, a city near Tiruchchirappalli.
In 1911, Ramanujan obtained a minor post with the Madras (now Chennai) Port Trust and continued to educate himself. He entered into correspondence with the English mathematician Godfrey H. Hardy of Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. This correspondence eventually led to Ramanujan being invited to Cambridge as a research scholar in 1914.
In 1918, Ramanujan became only the second Indian to be elected a fellow of the Royal Society, one of the world’s foremost scientific organizations. He also became a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. But his health declined in the unfamiliar climate of the United Kingdom; and, in 1919, he returned to Madras. He died in Kumbakonam on April 26, 1920.
