Reminiscences and Discoveries on Ramanujan's Bust

Abstract

Ramanujan was elected a Fellow of the Society in 1918 and he died in 1920, slightly more than a year after his return to India in 1919. The story of how a bust of one who had died in 1920 came to be made 60 years later is of some interest; and I hope that it is proper to tell that story on this occasion. In his biographical notice for Ramanujan (Proceedings of the Royal Society A 99, xiii-xxix) G.H. Hardy wrote: It was his insight into algebraical formulae, transformation of infinite series, and so forth, that was most amazing. On this side most certainly I have never met his equal, and I can compare him only with Euler or Jacobi. He worked, far more than the majority of modern mathematicians, by induction from numerical examples: all his congruence properties of partitions for example were discovered in this way. But with his memory, his patience, and his power of calculation he combined a power of generalisation, a feeling for form, and a capacity for rapid modification of his hypotheses, that were often really startling, and made him, in his own peculiar field, without a rival in his day.