National Mathematics Day is observed on December 22 in India. The day was announced by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at Madras University on February 26, 2012. The day is observed to mark the birth of the Indian mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan. 2012 was also observed as National Mathematics Year. The day is observed every year with various educational events and programs at schools and universities. In 2017, the day was celebrated by the opening of the Ramanujan Math Park in Kuppam, in Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh. As National Mathematics Day 2020 approaches, we bring to you date, significance, history and events held on the observance. Srinivasa Ramanujan 100th Death Anniversary: 7 Interesting Facts About the Great Indian Mathematics You Probably Did Not Know.

Srinivasa Ramanujan was one of the world's greatest mathematicians. A child prodigy, and a mathematical genius, his knowledge in mathematics was recognised by a mathematician at Madras Port Trust where he had started working as a clerk in 1912. He could work out Loney’s Trigonometry exercises without any help! It is said that he did not have any friends in school as his classmates, because they hardly understood him. 10 Things to Know About ‘The Man Who Knew Infinity’.

He joined the Trinity College a few months before World War I began. In 1916 he was awarded the Bachelor of Science degree; the next year he was elected to the London Mathematical Society. In 1918 he became the Fellow of the Royal Society for his research on Elliptic Functions and theory of numbers. In October the same year, he became the first Indian to be elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1919, he returned to India. He breathed his last at the age of 32 after contracting smallpox.

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