In 1913, a young man from the city of Madras and British India sent a letter to one of the world's preeminent mathematicians, G.A. Hardy, in Cambridge University in England.

The young man had no formal education in advanced mathematics,

yet that letter would end up changing the landscape of mathematics for the rest of the

20th century.

Learn more about the legendary Sri Navasa Ramanujan,

one of the world's most gifted natural mathematicians,

on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. On December 22nd, 1887, Sri

Ramanugin was born into a Brahmin family

in what is today the Southern Indian State of Tamil Nadu.

His father was a clerk who spent much of his time

working to support his family. His mother, who was a devout Hindu, brought him up and

passed along her religious devotion to her son. While he didn't enjoy his first attempts at school, he eventually

excelled. At the age of 10 he had passed his primary school exams with the highest scores

in the district. He was advanced to secondary school where it soon became evident that he was a mathematical

prodigy.

By the age of 11 he had exhausted the two university students who were renting a room from

his family.

He was given a book on trigonometry, which he taught taught himself and had fully completed by the age of 13.

When he was 16, he was given a copy of a synopsis of elementary results in pure and applied mathematics

by British mathematician G.S. Carr, which was a collection of over 5,000 mathematical

theorems. It was with this book that Ramanujan came into his own. He began developing his own theories and coming up with his own unique

solutions to problems. In 1904, he graduated high school and was given a special prize for excellence

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