Who is Srinivasa Ramanujan - The Man Who Knew Infinity

The Genius of Srinivasa Ramanujan 

Ramanujan is hailed as one of the all-time great mathematician, like Leonhard Euler, Carl Friedrich Gauss or Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi, for his natural mathematical genius. G. H. Hardy quotes:

"Here was a man who could work out modular equations and theorems... to orders unheard of, whose mastery of continued fractions was... beyond that of any mathematician in the world....

Hardy went on to claim that his greatest contribution to mathematics was discovering Ramanujan.

A major influence in Ramanujan's mathematics was at Town High School when he encountered the book 'Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure Mathematics,' by G. S. Carr. The book was a godsend, but it was written as a synopsis of formulas, theorems and short proofs and had a very concise style. For years afterward, Ramanujan would write in same style and often omit details and proofs for his incredible mathematical arguments.

By 1904 Ramanujan had begun to undertake deep research. He investigated the series Sigma(1/n) and calculated Euler's constant to 15 decimal places. He began to study the Bernoulli numbers, which were entirely his own independent discovery.