Srinivasa Ramanujan was a maths prodigy from a village near Madras. In 1907, he disqualified himself from a career in University research by focusing on his own interests to the neglect of the set curriculum, and failing his exams. However, highly-placed British and Indian friends found him time for research while employed as a clerk.

In 1913, Ramanujan’s well-placed friends found him a research post as Madras University, and helped him share his ideas with eminent mathematicians in England. One of these, GH Hardy, brought Ramanujan over to Cambridge, where for the next five years Ramanujan enriched Pure Mathematics with a series of brilliant conjectures, until his death in 1919, aged 32.

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