National Mathematics Day

National Mathematics Day is celebrated on 22 December every year to mark the birth anniversary of legendary Indian mathematician, Srinivasa Ramanujan.

Overview of National Mathematics Day

December 22 was designated as National Mathematics Day (NMD) by Government of India in 2012. 

The celebrations aim at spreading awareness about the importance of mathematics and the contributions made by Srinivasa Ramanujan, in the field of mathematics.

About Srinivasa Ramanujan

Srinivasa Ramanujan was born on 22nd December, 1887 in Erode, Tamil Nadu. At the age of 12, he had gained knowledge in Trignometry. At the age of 15, he obtained a copy of George Shoobridge Carr's Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics. In 1911 Ramanujan published the first of his papers in the Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society. He was awarded in 1916 the B.A. Degree by research of the Cambridge University. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in Feb. 1918. 

He had spent his childhood days in great difficulty and poverty. He used to borrow books and read books from friends in school. When he was young, he took up the job of clerk to meet the economic needs of the house. During his leisure time, he used to solve mathematics questions and worked on various types of theorems. He died on 26th April, 1920 at a very young age of 32.

Srinivasa Ramanujan hailed as an all-time great mathematician, for his natural genius, has left behind 4000 original theorems, despite his lack of formal education and a short life-span. 

Ramanujan number - 1729

1729 is also known as the Ramanujan Number. When the great Indian mathematician, Ramanujan was in England, he once became very ill. Prof. Hardy met Ramanujan in the hospital and stated Ramanujan that 1729 seemed to be a very dull number, and hoped it doesn’t turn out to be an unfavourable omen. But Ramanujan in contrary said it is a very interesting number, 1729 is the smallest number which can be written in the form of sum of cubes of two numbers in two ways, i.e. 1729=1³+12³=9³+10³. Since than the number 1729 is called Ramanujan’s number.