Ramanujan Essays And Surveys

This book contains essays on Ramanujan and his work that were written especially for this volume. It also includes important survey articles in areas influenced by Ramanujan's mathematics. Most of the articles in the book are nontechnical, but even those that are more technical contain substantial sections that will engage the general reader. The book opens with the only four existing photographs of Ramanujan, presenting historical accounts of them and information about other people in the photos. This section includes an account of a cryptic family history written by his younger brother, S. Lakshmi Narasimhan. Following are articles on Ramanujan's illness by R. A. Rankin, the British physician D. A. B. Young, and Nobel laureate S. Chandrasekhar. They present a study of his symptoms, a convincing diagnosis of the cause of his death, and a thorough exposition of Ramanujan's life as a patient in English sanitariums and nursing homes. Following this are biographies of S. Janaki (Mrs. Ramanujan) and S. Narayana Iyer, Chief Accountant of the Madras Port Trust Office, who first communicated Ramanujan's work to the Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society. The last half of the book begins with a section on ``Ramanujan's Manuscripts and Notebooks''. Included is an important article by G. E. Andrews on Ramanujan's lost notebook. The final two sections feature both nontechnical articles, such as Jonathan and Peter Borwein's ``Ramanujan and pi'', and more technical articles by Freeman Dyson, Atle Selberg, Richard Askey, and G. N. Watson. This volume complements the book Ramanujan: Letters and Commentary, Volume 9, in the AMS series, History of Mathematics. For more on Ramanujan, see these AMS publications Ramanujan: Twelve Lectures on Subjects Suggested by His Life and Work, Volume 136.H, and Collected Papers of Srinivasa Ramanujan, Volume 159.H, in the AMS Chelsea Publishing series.

The First Edition of the book is a collection of articles, all by the author, on the Indian mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan as well as on some of the greatest mathematicians in history whose life and works have things in common with Ramanujan. It presents a unique comparative study of Ramanujan’s spectacular discoveries and remarkable life with the monumental contributions of various mathematical luminaries, some of whom, like Ramanujan, overcame great difficulties in life. Also, among the articles are reviews of three important books on Ramanujan’s mathematics and life. In addition, some aspects of Ramanujan’s contributions, such as his remarkable formulae for the number pi, his path-breaking work in the theory of partitions, and his fundamental observations on quadratic forms, are discussed. Finally, the book describes various current efforts to ensure that the legacy of Ramanujan will be preserved and continue to thrive in the future. This Second Edition is an expanded version of the first with six more articles by the author. Of note is the inclusion of a detailed review of the movie The Man Who Knew Infinity, a description of the fundamental work of the SASTRA Ramanujan Prize Winners, and an account of the Royal Society Conference to honour Ramanujan’s legacy on the centenary of his election as FRS.

​​​​In the spring of 1976, George Andrews of Pennsylvania State University visited the library at Trinity College, Cambridge, to examine the papers of the late G.N. Watson. Among these papers, Andrews discovered a sheaf of 138 pages in the handwriting of Srinivasa Ramanujan. This manuscript was soon designated, "Ramanujan's lost notebook." Its discovery has frequently been deemed the mathematical equivalent of finding Beethoven's tenth symphony. This volume is the fourth of five volumes that the authors plan to write on Ramanujan’s lost notebook.​ In contrast to the first three books on Ramanujan's Lost Notebook, the fourth book does not focus on q-series. Most of the entries examined in this volume fall under the purviews of number theory and classical analysis. Several incomplete manuscripts of Ramanujan published by Narosa with the lost notebook are discussed. Three of the partial manuscripts are on diophantine approximation, and others are in classical Fourier analysis and prime number theory. Most of the entries in number theory fall under the umbrella of classical analytic number theory. Perhaps the most intriguing entries are connected with the classical, unsolved circle and divisor problems. Review from the second volume: "Fans of Ramanujan's mathematics are sure to be delighted by this book. While some of the content is taken directly from published papers, most chapters contain new material and some previously published proofs have been improved. Many entries are just begging for further study and will undoubtedly be inspiring research for decades to come. The next installment in this series is eagerly awaited." - MathSciNet Review from the first volume: "Andrews and Berndt are to be congratulated on the job they are doing. This is the first step...on the way to an understanding of the work of the genius Ramanujan. It should act as an inspiration to future generations of mathematicians to tackle a job that will never be complete." - Gazette of the Australian Mathematical Society​

Based on the remarkable true story of G. H. Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan, and populated with such luminaries such as D. H. Lawrence, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Indian Clerk takes this extraordinary slice of history and transforms it into an emotional and spellbinding story about the fragility of human connection and our need to find order in the world. A literary masterpiece, it appeared on four bestseller lists, including the Los Angeles Times, and received dazzling reviews from every major publication in the country.

Ramanujan is recognized as one of the great number theorists of the twentieth century. Here now is the first book to provide an introduction to his work in number theory. Most of Ramanujan's work in number theory arose out of $q$-series and theta functions. This book provides an introduction to these two important subjects and to some of the topics in number theory that are inextricably intertwined with them, including the theory of partitions, sums of squares and triangular numbers, and the Ramanujan tau function. The majority of the results discussed here are originally due to Ramanujan or were rediscovered by him. Ramanujan did not leave us proofs of the thousands of theorems he recorded in his notebooks, and so it cannot be claimed that many of the proofs given in this book are those found by Ramanujan. However, they are all in the spirit of his mathematics. The subjects examined in this book have a rich history dating back to Euler and Jacobi, and they continue to be focal points of contemporary mathematical research. Therefore, at the end of each of the seven chapters, Berndt discusses the results established in the chapter and places them in both historical and contemporary contexts. The book is suitable for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students interested in number theory.

The Rogers--Ramanujan identities are a pair of infinite series—infinite product identities that were first discovered in 1894. Over the past several decades these identities, and identities of similar type, have found applications in number theory, combinatorics, Lie algebra and vertex operator algebra theory, physics (especially statistical mechanics), and computer science (especially algorithmic proof theory). Presented in a coherant and clear way, this will be the first book entirely devoted to the Rogers—Ramanujan identities and will include related historical material that is unavailable elsewhere.

Praise for the previous edition: “…ample information for reports.”—School Library Journal During the first half of the 20th century, mathematics became an international discipline that led to major advances in science and technology. Modern Mathematics, Updated Edition provides an eye-opening introduction to those five historic decades by analyzing the advancement of the field through the accomplishments of 10 significant mathematicians. From David Hilbert and Emmy Noether, who introduced the infinite dimensional vector spaces and algebraic rings that bear their names, to Norbert Wiener, the founder of cybernetics, this in-depth title covers the early 20th-century advancements that expanded the field of mathematics and transformed the way that mathematicians do their work. This edition is ideal for middle and high school students seeking resources for research or general interest.