Srinivasa Ramanujan: The self-taught maths genius

Ever stared at a math problem and thought, “I wish someone could just explain this to me”?

Maybe you have googled it, watched a video, texted a friend. Or flipped through a textbook hoping the answer would somehow make sense.

We have all been there. Learning today means help is just a click away—formulas online, doubt sessions, study groups, mobile apps. But what if you had none of that? No guide. No degree. No classroom. Just instinct, imagination and a mind wired to see patterns where others saw puzzles.

Over a hundred years ago, in a corner of colonial India, one such mind emerged—solving centuries-old problems, writing equations that the world’s top mathematicians would struggle to comprehend and doing it all without any of the tools we now consider essential. The man was Srinivasa Ramanujan—a self-taught genius who didn’t just study mathematics, he heard it, felt it and gifted it to the world, like poetry etched in numbers.

Born on December 22, 1887, in Erode, Tamil Nadu, Ramanujan was fascinated by numbers from a young age. While other subjects failed to interest him, mathematics consumed him. Lacking formal education in advanced math, he taught himself using outdated textbooks and his intuition, producing ground-breaking results in number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions.

By his twenties, Ramanujan was developing original work with little precedent. His first paper, published in 1911 in the Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society, caught the attention of mathematicians. In 1913, he sent a letter to British mathematician GH Hardy, who was initially sceptical but quickly recognised Ramanujan’s extraordinary talent. Hardy invited him to Cambridge, and in 1914, Ramanujan moved to England.

His work on partition functions and modular forms was revolutionary. One of his famous anecdotes involves the number 1729, which he identified as the “smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways”. This number became forever linked to his legacy.

Despite his success, the cold English climate and dietary restrictions took a toll on his health. Diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1917, he returned to India in 1919. His health continued to worsen and he passed away on April 26, 1920, at the age of 32. His profound contributions to mathematics continue to inspire and influence the field today, cementing his place as one of the greatest mathematical minds in history.