Page 98 - Mathematics Class - XII

BHASKARACHARYA’S CONTRIBUTIONS
1. Bhaskara’s Sidhantasiromoni (1150 AD) was divided into four parts: Lilavati (rule of arithmetic), Vijaganita
(on algebra, root extraction), Grahaganitadhya (motion of planets) and Golodhyaya (on calculation
of sphere).
2. Bhaskaracharya advanced the concept of Bijganit or algebra. He dealt on algorithm, zero and its use, unknown
quantities, surds, the pulverized or ‘kuttaka’, solution of quadratic equations and of certain equation of third
and fourth degree.

SRINIVASA RAMANUJAN’S CONTRIBUTIONS
Once a British mathematician, Hardy came over to visit Ramanujan in his bedside, Hardy said “I say, Srinivas, I
thought the number of the taxi I came in was a very dull one. It was 1729”. Without even a moment’s hesitation,
Ramanujan replied, “No, maybe not. It is not a dull number in the very least. It is the lowest number that can be
expressed in two different ways as the sum of two cubes!”—What a genius the ‘Ramanujan’.
Later on this number become famous as ‘Ramanujan Number’. (1729 = 10 + 9 = 12 + 1 ).
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Srinivasa Ramanujan is one of the celebrated Indian mathematicians. His important contributions to the field
include Hardy-Ramanujan-Littlewood circle method in number theory, Roger-Ramanujan’s identities in
partition of numbers, work on algebra of inequalities, elliptic functions, continued fractions, partial sums and
products of hypergeometric series.

OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS

P. C. Mahalanobis: Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis is the founder of Indian Statistical Institute as well as the
National Sample Surveys for which he gained international recognition.

C. R. Rao: Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao, popularly known as C. R. Rao is a well-known statistician, famous
for his “Theory of Estimation”.

D. R. Kaprekar: D R Kaprekar discovered several results in number theory, including a class of numbers and a
constant named after him. Without any formal mathematical education he published extensively and was very
well known in recreational mathematics circle.

Harish Chandra: Harish Chandra is famously known for infinite dimensional group representation theory.

Narendra Karmarkar: Narendra Karmarkar is known for his Karmarkar’s algorithm. He is listed as a highly
cited researcher by Institute for Scientific Information.

Shakuntala Devi: Shakuntala Devi was an Indian writer and mathematical genius popularly known as the "human
computer". She was known to make complicated mathematical calculations in her head and effortlessly speak
out the results! Her talent earned her a place in the 1982 edition of The Guinness Book of World Records.

Manjul Bhargava: Manjul Bhargava is recognized internationally as one of the foremost mathematicians of our
times and one of the leading experts in number theory. He is the first person of Indian origin to have won the
coveted Fields Medal in Mathematics for his path-breaking work in Number Theory.

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