# Talk:Srinivasa Ramanujan

Srinivasa Ramanujan has been listed as one of the Mathematics good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
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## Bauer

The Bauer mentioned in the article seems to be G. Bauer, in 1859. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.105.0.33 (talk) 12:27, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Would that be this G. Bauer? Justin W Smith (talk) 15:49, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
Bauer is a common name in Germany. Gustav A. Bauer was active in 1859. He seems to have been active in 1902, when he must have been quite old. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.156.203.64 (talk) 16:52, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

## Hardy's remarks on Ramanujan's paper on highly composite numbers

In the paragraph on Ramanujan's paper on highly composite numbers, there is the statement "Hardy remarked that this was one of the most unusual papers seen in mathematical research at that time and that Ramanujan showed extraordinary ingenuity in handling it." Would someone please cite a reference for this? Jsondow (talk) 06:46, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

## Merge proposal of Ramanujan's wife

Please note a proposal to merge Ramanujan's wife's page to this one. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 16:21, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Done so, per WP:BOLD and since this article will be getting a lot of pageviews today. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 19:04, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

## Surprised for the high number of readers?

This fact can owe to him to a news newly published that refers to certain notes that it would have left in his deathbed. Those writings did not have meaning up to "yesterday" when a mathematicians discovered that it is a sort of equations related to the mathematics that it governs the black holes.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Deathbed-Maths-Theory-Proven-Correct-100-Years-Later-317814.shtml

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2254352/Deathbed-dream-puzzles-renowned-Indian-mathematician-Srinivasa-finally-solved--100-years-died.html

EmpatojayosBrand (talk) 05:20, 30 December 2012 (UTC) (manual edit -> I forgot my password) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.106.67.85 (talk)

I think this is important and should be added in the article. Yesterday I talked with Favonian. The question is how to present this information and where? Any idea?
Other than the two sources (dailymail etc) here are few more sources:

• Regarding the insertion of the sources - I will have to see the sources before saying anything. For the high number of readers, there is only one true answer not the news source but this. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 09:16, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

## Missing details between 8 February 1913 and 17 March 1914

The bio currently misses details of the his life between 1913 and 1914. During this period E. H. Neville, Francis Spring and Richard Littlehailes (new article) wrote three letters to Madras University and Governor of Madras for arrangement of money for Ramanujan to stay in England. This needs to be inserted in the article. Solomon7968 14:57, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

## Bernoulli numbers

The quote from Ramanujan's early paper about Bernoulli numbers contains a mathematical statement that is incorrect. While there is no need to change the quote, the mistake should be noted immediately below it in the article.

The source for the quote is given as Kanigel's book, p. 91. Kanigel, himself, notes the error on p. 192. The numerator of B_20 over 20 factors as 283 x 617, refuting statement 1 of Ramanujan's three quoted properties of Bernoulli numbers.

Since the other two statements are true, it might be useful to give references for them in other wikipedia articles.

Unless someone else wants to work on this, I will make these changes in a few days. Hombre1729 (talk) 15:49, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

## His full name

The Russian version of this article gives his full name, in English, as Srīnivāsa Rāmānujan Iyengar (including accent marks as shown). Should the opening section be changed to indicate this? Hgrosser (talk) 03:14, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Iyengar denotes a caste and in the case of Ramanujan a different naming was followed. Google books have more "Srinivasa Ramanujan" (13.000) and just 50 dubious Iyengar entries.--ThaThinThaKiThaTha (talk) 13:47, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
Because the sources which indicate his name as being solely Srinivasa Ramanujan are vastly more numerous than those which indicate that the addition of Iyengar is valid, I think its reasonable to remove the dubious addition of Iyengar. Factcheckercorrecter (talk) 02:28, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

## Early JIMS problem

The problem

${\displaystyle {\sqrt {1+2{\sqrt {1+3{\sqrt {1+\cdots }}}}}}.}$

given as an early J. Ind. Math. Soc. problem was surely not made up by Ramanujan in the way suggested by his proposed method of solution. It is simply what you get from the formula

${\displaystyle (x-1)(x+1)=x^{2}-1}$

rewritten successively as

${\displaystyle x={\sqrt {1+(x-1)(x+1)}}}$
${\displaystyle ={\sqrt {1+(x-1){\sqrt {1+x(x+2)}}}}}$
${\displaystyle ={\sqrt {1+(x-1){\sqrt {1+x{\sqrt {1+(x+1)(x+3)}}}}}}}$

axd so on. Setting x = 3 then yields the solution's equation

${\displaystyle 3={\sqrt {1+2{\sqrt {1+3{\sqrt {1+\cdots }}}}}}}$

Of course if you believe the movie then that equation might have sprung unbidden into his mind (put there by God?) and he found a not-so-elegant way of proving it, consistent with the movie's point of view that he was better at coming up with valid identities than with proofs of their validity.

Conceivably he obtained his considerably more complicated equation

${\displaystyle x+n+a={\sqrt {ax+(n+a)^{2}+x{\sqrt {a(x+n)+(n+a)^{2}+(x+n){\sqrt {\cdots }}}}}}}$

by first seeing the basic argument above and then obfuscating the reasoning by substituting ${\displaystyle x+a+n}$ for ${\displaystyle x}$ and ${\displaystyle n}$ for 1 in the above line of reasoning, yielding his complicated equation as may be easily verified by elementary algebra. But this was never Ramanujan's style: before he focused on mathematics he wrote poetry, and no afficionado of the poetry of mathematics could imagine turning the foregoing basic argument into anything so pointlessly complicated! Surely more likely is that his complicated equation was something he merely stumbled over by chance during his early explorations and failed to identify its true provenance.

In any event this is the sort of triviality that must have been noticed in passing by various people during the century since the problem was published. The question is whether anybody thought it worthy of note anywhere, and if so where, as it would be worth mentioning in the article as an illustration of something, though whether of Ramanujan's sense of humour or of his overlooking one of the proofs from THE BOOK would have to remain unanswered. Vaughan Pratt (talk) 19:33, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

## Mathematical achievements, house address problem

There must be some kind of error. How can the solution to the address problem be a continuous fraction since it must belong to the set of natural numbers? No? Also, there is only one solution, n=288 and x=204. Peseve (talk) 05:21, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

n and x satisfy (2n+1)^2 - 8* x^2 = 1 This is Pell's equation, the solutions to which are found by calculating the continued fraction of sqrt(8) = (2;1,4) and the 8th convergent is 577/204 so that n = 288, x = 204. A1jrj (talk) 15:44, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

## S.S. Nevasa

According to this Wikipedia article, the SS Nevasa was built in 1955. However, this page [on Ramanujan] says that he boarded it it 1914. Something isn't adding up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Onevim (talkcontribs) 03:06, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Ship names get reused. According to this website, SS Nevasa (1956) is the third incarnation for BI. Glrx (talk) 14:58, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
See http://www.shf.org.au/archives-research/photographic-collections/shf-general-collection/merchant-ships-british-india/ for 1913-1948 version. Glrx (talk) 15:02, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

## Name etymology, caste designation

After seeing the AN/I section, I've restored the other thing removed by Panoramalama, the "Iyengar" at the end of his name. As explained at the start of the body of the article, this is neither a title nor an honorific, but a caste designation. It's therefore not comparable to calling him "Mr. Ramanujan" or "Sir Srinavasa", the kinds of things the ban on titles and honorifics is intended to prevent; nor is that a complete ban, or we wouldn't have "FRS" after his name at the start of the article. It's unconventional to explain the etymology of someone's name in an article section; that's more applicable to place names. It seems a bit peculiar to me, as if Wikipedia is implying that Indian names are so exotic they need explaining. So I'm not sure we need that section, but given that it includes an explanation of "Iyengar", we definitely need to include that in the first statement of his name. I see that the following section also links "Iyengar", so I think the article would actually be improved by explaining "Iyengar" there, like this: "a Tamil Brahmin Iyengar family (a caste of Hindu Brahmins of Tamil origin whose members follow the Visishtadvaita philosophy propounded by Ramanuja) in Erode, Madras Presidency", and cutting the section I've now re-titled "Name". Yngvadottir (talk) 23:40, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

I totally agree with what you did on the article. But I must say I am a bit surprised at your statement "It seems a bit peculiar to me, as if Wikipedia is implying that Indian names are so exotic they need explaining." In an English encyclopedia, as wp:en is, which is to be of use to the average English speaking individual who doesn't know much about India, and presumably nearly nothing concerning Indian names, Indian names are indeed exotic, and they do need to be explained. This is the very purpose of an encyclopedia: explaining. Sapphorain (talk) 23:56, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
Is it necessary for a reader to know the derivation of someone's name? Few readers will know the etymologies of even common English names, such as Robert or Edith. We conventionally cover name etymologies in their own articles; this goes for surnames as well as forenames. Where the name is in fact an honorific or was bestowed on the person for some reason that needs explaining (such as some names of rulers), it's explained in that context, but otherwise I can't see any purpose of explaining the etymology of someone's name in their biography. It does seem to me like exoticizing. Frankly, I would have made the change I suggest if this were not a GA; I avoid making major edits to GAs and FAs. Yngvadottir (talk) 00:27, 14 December 2016 (UTC)