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| A commemorative stamp of Srinivasa Ramanujan. Image courtesy University of Madras. |
Life saver doesn't point only those who give blood and saved you, who gave medical attention and saved you or who gave money and uplifted you from poverty. For me, Life saver also means to someone who helped me to attain ma aim/goal/ambition. So in a way, I'am owed to our beloved mathematician Ramanujan in giving me a job offer in TCS. Hehe..I know...You will be thinking how the man who passed away on 26 April 1920 offer me a job in TCS or helped me to get that. The story starts....
11 November 2012 : Our college has invited students for it's TCS recruitment. As every other candidates, I was also afraid a little bit as it was my first experience as a fresher. I was directed to a panel consisting of 2 people- 1 Technical recruiter and 1 H.R recruiter. After the "good morning" wish and little bit self introduction, they asked me to introduce myself. I did it quite well as it's a sure question and was prepared for that. After that H.R guy entered into G.K round..his first question was to me " Do you know Ramanujan's number?" .... After a pause...smile came into ma face..i told "yes sir, every engineer should know that.. 1729" .. From his reaction I was sure that he is impressed. I thanked to my old 10th tuition sir..who used to tell story of great legends and encourage us a lot. Anil sir ( 10th tuition sir), he was one of those men who inspired me a lot and he even tells the story behind these things in an interesting way so that we are not bored. All those memories still linker in ma brain.
After that 1729 question, suddenly Technical Lady smiled and told to the H.R sir hearing my answer " oh, sir.. i didnt know that number being an engineer" !! At that moment I thanked Ramanujan personally...because it's him who broke that ice berg and made a funny environment. So now the starting problem is over... Next step is to impress them more.. I interfered their talk smoothly and told to the Technical Lady " Madam, there's an interesting story behind that...lemme explain" she replied "oh,,is it?..tell" ..By god's grace by short term memory went to a long term memory and was letting all those Anil sir's stories in a smooth flow : "One day Ramanujan was hospitalized and his friend came to see him..in between casual talks friend told him that the car by which he came had an ugly number "1729" . Listening to this Ramanujan replied within a fracion of a second he replied that "1729 is the smallest number which can be expressed in sum of cubes of two numbers in two different ways" "
In wikipedia, you will get a quote like this
The number 1729 is known as the Hardy–Ramanujan number after a famous anecdote of the British mathematician G. H. Hardy regarding a visit to the hospital to see Ramanujan. In Hardy's words:[91]
| “ | I remember once going to see him when he was ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavorable omen. "No," he replied, "it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways." | ” |
The two different ways are
- 1729 = 13 + 123 = 93 + 103.
Generalizations of this idea have created the notion of "taxicab numbers". Coincidentally, 1729 is also a Carmichael number.
So, hearing my description H.R guy gave a shake hand and then from that moment he talked very friend to me. That lady was also so happy . May she was missing stories after childhood. Lolz.
Today, it's Ramanujan's 125th Birthday and I express my gratitude towards him for being a life saver to achieve my aim of being an engineer in I.T field. He is of-course a legend in India as well as in Mathematics Science because all he had is a 32 year life span and the contribution he made in this very small duration is something worth-while valuable discoveries which is still being the basic ideas for the innovative explorations in modern science.
Serious issue with our education is that there is very less thrust on creativity. The emphasis is more on memory and mugging up methodology. Google has to be thanked for their initiative in the name of late S.Ramanujan. Unfortunately, neither the country not the home state of the great mathematician did anything in his memory
ReplyDelete@Birthday SMS : Yupz. you are right and I was really shocked because I have seen only a commerative postage stamp in the name of Sir.Ramanujan. That's why I placed that precious (sacastic way) gift from the Indian Government , in the Blog.
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