National Mathematics Day at AMU
Aligarh : Mohammad Azeem, PhD in Mathematics student won the senior level quiz held to mark the National Mathematics Day, the birth anniversary of eminent mathematician, Srinivasa Ramanujan at the Department of Mathematics, Aligarh Muslim University (AMU).
Arsalan Ullah Khan, (MSc) secured the second place in the senior quiz and Manoj Kumar (PhD) finished third.
Manav Sharma (BSc) was declared the winner of the junior level quiz, finishing ahead of batch mate, Shahidul Islam and Diploma in Engineering student, Md Shahnawaz Alam in second and third places respectively.
In the prize distribution ceremony on December 22, Prof Mohammad Ashraf (Chairman, Department of Mathematics) said: “Ramanujan was a self-taught mathematician and one of the greatest Indian mathematicians of all time who worked on theorems that seemed impossible to solve. His work on Riemann series, continued fractions, hypergeometric series, elliptic integrals, and functional equations belonging to the zeta function are well recognised”.
The celebrations also included various other programmes in the hybrid online/offline modes to raise awareness on the value of mathematics and the recent advances and breakthroughs in the subject in three different sessions chaired by Prof Mohammad Ashraf, Prof Asma Ali and Prof Nadeemur Rehman.
In the first session, Dr Ajay Kumar (Professor Emeritus, Department of Mathematics, University of Delhi, New Delhi) delineated ‘Completeness Property of the Real Numbers’ and other important facts about ‘Pi’ and its presence in the Bible.
Prof Punita Batra (Harish Research Institute, Allahabad) spoke on Ramanujan’s first full length research paper, ‘On Some Properties of Bernoulli Number’ in the second session.
She said, “Ramanujan’s first research paper was published in the Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society in 1911. He also published four more short papers in the Journal in the years 1912 and 1913”.
In the third session, Prof Kalyan Chakraborthy (Director, Kerala School of Mathematics) delivered a talk on ‘A Couple of Gems from Ramanujan’s Garden’ in which he deliberated on Ramanujan’s connection with G H Hardy.
Speaking on the importance of Ramanujan’s works and National Mathematics Day, Prof Qamrul Hasan Ansari (Programme Convener) pointed out that Ramanujan did not receive any formal education in Mathematics and yet he went on to make several important contributions to the subject.
“Ramanujan played a fundamental role in the development of 20th century mathematics and his final writings are serving as an inspiration for the mathematics of this century”, said Dr Shakir Ali (Co-convener).
Dr Shakir also extended the vote of thanks and Dr Musavvir Ali (Joint-convener) conducted the programme.
Faculty members from across the Country, Iran, Indonesia, South Korea and Malaysia attended the programme and a total of 184 students participated in the quiz contests.