Srinivasa Ramanujan was an influential mathematician

THE legendary mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan was known for coming up with unconventional mathematical ideas. He has now inspired a computer program that does the same.

Called the Ramanujan Machine, the software poses conjectures for generating equations whose output is fundamental mathematical constants such as π and e. A conjecture is an unproven mathematical statement.

Born in 1887 in what is now Tamil Nadu in India, Ramanujan was a self-taught mathematician. He often claimed that his results came to him in a dream, and disliked the formal proofs favoured by most mathematicians. Ramanujan moved to the UK in 1914 …