Why in news? To remember the great contribution of Srinivasa Ramanujan to mathematics, every year December 22 is celebrated as national mathematics day.

Highlights

• He was an Indian mathematician but had no formal training in pure mathematics
• Substantial contributions : mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions, including solutions to mathematical problems then considered unsolvable.
• He independently compiled nearly 3,900 results (mostly identities and equations).
• Ramanujan prime, the Ramanujan theta function, partition formulae and mock theta functions, have opened entire new areas of work and inspired a vast amount of further research.
• Ramanujan Journal : Scientific journal, to publish work in all areas of mathematics influenced by Ramanujan
• He became one of the youngest Fellows of the Royal Society and only the second Indian member, and the first Indian to be elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
• Awards: Fellow of the Royal Society (1918)
• Ramanujan’s home state of Tamil Nadu celebrates 22 December (Ramanujan’s birthday) as ‘State IT Day’.
• The Man Who Knew Infinity is a 2015 film based on Kanigel’s book.