National Mathematics Day at AMU
Aligarh: Shahbaz Ali (B.Sc) and Aijaz Nazir (M.Sc) won the mathematical quiz in the undergraduate and postgraduate categories respectively, while Injila Muneer (M.Sc) was declared the winner of the essay writing competition held at the Department of Mathematics to mark the birth anniversary of Srinivasa Aiyangar Ramanujan and the National Mathematics Day.
Shahid ul Islam (B.Sc) finished second and Uzma Mahmood (B.Sc) secured the third place in the undergraduate quiz. In the postgraduate quiz, M.Sc students Rehan Raza and S K Md Salauddin, came in second and third place, respectively. Ph.D. Student Manoj Kumar won the second prize for his essay and Prashant Sharma (B.Sc) finished third in the essay competition.
Delivering a talk on the life of Srinivasa Ramanujan, Prof Dinesh Singh (Former Vice-Chancellor, Delhi University) described the mathematician’s life and journey towards establishing the famed mathematical theories.
“The Cambridge University regularly awarded a PhD to Srinivasa Ramanujan, though Ramanujan was not having any other degrees. He was a self-taught mathematician; it is astonishing how much the man achieved, turning into one of the most significant groundbreakers in history”.
Prof Mohammad Ashraf (Dean, Faculty of Science, and Chairman, Department of Mathematics) chaired the first session.
In the second session, Prof C S Lalitha (Former Dean, Faculty of Mathematical Science, Delhi University) spoke on ‘Srinivasa Ramanujan – The Pride of Indian Mathematics’.
She discussed the contributions of Ramanujan to the theory of numbers including pioneering discoveries of the properties of the partition function.
Prof Lalitha also spoke on various awards bestowed on Ramanujan and showed postal stamps issued by the Government to honour him.
The session was chaired by Prof Shahid Ali.
In the lecture on ‘Srinivasa Ramanujan – Legendary Indian Mathematician of the Twentieth Century’, Dr A K Agarwal (Professor Emeritus, Punjab University, Chandigarh) delineated applications of the number theory developed by Ramanujan and how it was derived.
He said: “Ramanujan knew more than infinity, contributed theorems and compiled 3900 results. People also know him for the Hardy-Ramanujan number. The British mathematician, G H Hardy who had gone to visit Ramanujan at a hospital quipped that he came in a taxi with the number ‘1729’ which seemed a fairly ordinary number—to which Ramanujan replied that this number is the smallest number which can be expressed as the sum of two different cubes in two different ways. While this number is not Ramanujan’s greatest combination, it is certainly a fascinating discovery that is easiest to remember among all of his discoveries.”
Prof Viqar Azam Khan chaired the third session.
Presiding over the inaugural function, Prof Mohammad Ashraf explained Ramanujan’s fascination with numbers and striking contributions to ‘Partitio Numerorum’, the study of partitions of numbers.
Highlighting the importance of Mathematics in our daily life, Dr Musavvir Ali said, “We have taken several initiatives to motivate the young generation to study and learn mathematics”.
He also spoke on Ramanujan’s explanation of the analytical theory of numbers and work on elliptic functions, continued fractions, and infinite series.
Prof Qamrul Hasan Ansari spoke about how Ramanujan’s flair for mathematics was recognised and his documented work.
He also spoke about the importance of mathematics in our daily lives.
The week-long celebrations which included the quiz and essay competitions were conducted under the under the convenership of Prof Shahid Ali and Co-convenership of Dr Musavvir Ali and Dr Akhlad Iqbal, while Prof Qamrul Hasan Ansari was the convenor of the main National Mathematics Day function.
Prof Nadeem Ur Rehman (Co-convener, National Mathematics Day) extended the vote of thanks.