A Brief Biography of Ramanujan, origin of numerals and brief biographies of ancient Indian Mathematicians.

This volume consists of a collection of articles based on lectures given by scholars from India, Europe and USA at the sessions on 'History of Indian Mathematics' at the AMS-India mathematics conference in Bangalore during December 2003. These articles cover a wide spectrum of themes in Indian mathematics. They begin with the mathematics of the ancient period dealing with Vedic Prosody and Buddhist Logic, move on to the work of Brahmagupta, of Bhaskara, and that of the mathematicians of the Kerala school of the classical and medieval period, and end with the work of Ramanaujan, and Indian contributions to Quantum Statistics during the modern era. The volume should be of value to those interested in the history of mathematics.

The Purpose Of This Book Is To Draw The Attention Of Students And Teachers Of Mathematics To The Historical Continuity Of Indian Mathematics, Starting From The Sulba Sutras Of The Vedas Up To The 17Th Century. The Book Includes Proofs, Not Presented So Far, Of The Propositions Stated In The Well-Known Treatise Vedic Mathematics By Sri Bharati Krishna Teertha. It Also Introduces To The Modern Reader The Work Of Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, Bhaskara And Madhava.

"The son of a prominent Japanese mathematician who came to the United States after World War II, Ken Ono was raised on a diet of high expectations and little praise. Rebelling against his pressure-cooker of a life, Ken determined to drop out of high school to follow his own path. To obtain his father’s approval, he invoked the biography of the famous Indian mathematical prodigy Srinivasa Ramanujan, whom his father revered, who had twice flunked out of college because of his single-minded devotion to mathematics. Ono describes his rocky path through college and graduate school, interweaving Ramanujan’s story with his own and telling how at key moments, he was inspired by Ramanujan and guided by mentors who encouraged him to pursue his interest in exploring Ramanujan’s mathematical legacy. Picking up where others left off, beginning with the great English mathematician G.H. Hardy, who brought Ramanujan to Cambridge in 1914, Ono has devoted his mathematical career to understanding how in his short life, Ramanujan was able to discover so many deep mathematical truths, which Ramanujan believed had been sent to him as visions from a Hindu goddess. And it was Ramanujan who was ultimately the source of reconciliation between Ono and his parents. Ono’s search for Ramanujan ranges over three continents and crosses paths with mathematicians whose lives span the globe and the entire twentieth century and beyond. Along the way, Ken made many fascinating discoveries. The most important and surprising one of all was his own humanity."

The First Edition of the book is a collection of articles, all by the author, on the Indian mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan as well as on some of the greatest mathematicians in history whose life and works have things in common with Ramanujan. It presents a unique comparative study of Ramanujan’s spectacular discoveries and remarkable life with the monumental contributions of various mathematical luminaries, some of whom, like Ramanujan, overcame great difficulties in life. Also, among the articles are reviews of three important books on Ramanujan’s mathematics and life. In addition, some aspects of Ramanujan’s contributions, such as his remarkable formulae for the number pi, his path-breaking work in the theory of partitions, and his fundamental observations on quadratic forms, are discussed. Finally, the book describes various current efforts to ensure that the legacy of Ramanujan will be preserved and continue to thrive in the future. This Second Edition is an expanded version of the first with six more articles by the author. Of note is the inclusion of a detailed review of the movie The Man Who Knew Infinity, a description of the fundamental work of the SASTRA Ramanujan Prize Winners, and an account of the Royal Society Conference to honour Ramanujan’s legacy on the centenary of his election as FRS.

This book is a geometrical survey of the Sanskrit and Prakrt scientific and quasi-scientific literature of India, beginning with the Vedic literature and ending with the early part of the 17th century. It deals in detail with the Sulbasutras in the Vedic literature, with the mathematical parts of Jaina Canonical works and of the Hindu Siddhantas and with the contributions to geometry made by the astronomer mathematicians Aryabhata I & II, Sripati, Bhaskara I & II, Sangamagrama Madhava, Paramesvara, Nilakantha, his disciples and a host of others. The works of the mathematicians Mahavira, Sridhara and Narayana Pandita and the Bakshali Manuscript have also been studied. The work seeks to explode the theory that the Indian mathematical genius was predominantly algebraic and computational and that it eschewed proofs and rationales. There was a school in India which delighted to demonstrate even algebraical results geometrically. In their search for a sufficiently good approximation for the value of pie Indian mathematicians had discovered the tool of integration. Which they used equally effectively for finding the surface area and volume of a sphere and in other fields. This discovery of integration was the sequel of the inextricable blending of geometry and series mathematics.