Dr. Prasantha Chandra Mahalanobius

 

Dr. Prasantha Chandra Mahalanobius, (1893 – 1972), the renowned Statistician who established the Statistical Laboratory in Kolkata, in December 1981 – which later became the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) – was a student at King’s college, Cambridge, from October 1913, for his Tripos in Mathematics and Physics. He became a good friend of Ramanujan, when he showed Ramanujan how to get under the tucked in blankets of his bed (and not under the top linen covering the bed, with his overcoat and shawl ! ) and sleep comfortably on cold, wintry nights.

The period of Ramanujan’s stay in England almost overlapped with World War I . One of the lecturers went to war*, wrote Ramanujan to a friend [Krishna Rao] in India and Ramanujan felt that the other professors …lost their interest owing to the… war. One of the professors had remarked that Ramanujan was in England at the most unfortunate time. There were about 700 students before the war, but this number was reduced to 150, by November 1915.

* Ramanujan was perhaps referring to the departure of Mr. J.E. Littlewood

Ramanujan in a letter to his mother wrote about the war:

Salutations to the great Ramanuja! Ramanujan makes the countless prostrations to his mother and writes. Please write about your welfare. The letters you write reach me regularly. The three letters written on August 4, 10 and 11 reached me. I could not write letters for two weeks. You will henceforth be getting letters every week. There is no war in this country. War is going only in the neighbouring country. That is to say, war is waged in a country that is as far as Rangoon is away from the city (Madras). Lakhs of persons have come here from our country to join the forces. Seven hundred Rajas have come here from our country to wage war. Ultimate victory will come only to the king of this country. You need not send any provisions. Ramachandra Rao’s relative Ananda Rao, a youngster, has come to this country for study. He has not yet reached this place. He will come in October. Mr. Seshu Aiyar has told him to take with him numerous articles for being given to me. He and another youngster Sankara Rao have arrived in England.

Hardy’s Letter to Dewsbury

In one respect Mr. Ramanujan has been most unfortunate. The war has naturally had disastrous results on the progress of mathematical research. It has distracted three-quarters of the interest that would otherwise have been taken in his work, and has made it almost impossible to bring his results to the notice of the continental mathematicians most certain to appreciate it. It has moreover deprived him of the teaching of Mr. Littlewood, one of the great benefits which his visit to England was intended to secure. All this will pass; and, in spite of it, it is already safe to say that Mr. Ramanujan has justified abundantly all the hopes that were based upon his work in India, and has shown that he possesses powers as remarkable in their way as those of any living mathematician.

Hardy periodically sent official reports to the Registrar of the University of Madras about Ramanujan’s progress. In one such report, he has lamented about the war marring the progress of Ramanujan’s research work in mathematics.

During his five year stay in Cambridge, Ramanujan published twenty one research papers containing theorems on definite integral, modular equations, Riemann’s zeta function, infinite series, summation of series, analytic number theory, asymptotic formulae, modular functions, partitions and combinatorial analysis. His paper entitled Highly Composite Numbers which appeared in the Journal of the London Mathematical Society, in 1915, is 62 pages long and contains 269 equations. This is his longest paper. The London Mathematical Society has some financial difficulties at that time and Ramanujan was requested to reduce the length of his paper to save printing expenses. Five of these 21 research papers were in collaboration with Hardy. Ramanujan also published five short notes in the Records of Proceedings at meetings of the London Mathematical Society and six more in the journal of the Indian Mathematical Society.  
In spite of the raging war, which was raging, which deprived Ramanujan of the center stage, which he would have otherwise held with his brilliant research work in the midst of his peers, the confidence he kindled in Hardy was enough to win for him recognition and laurels. Ramanujan was awarded the B.A. degree by research in March 1916 for his work on Highly Composite Numbers and published in the Journal of the London Mathematical Society. Ramanujan's dissertation bore the same title and included six other papers. This work of Ramanujan, according to Hardy: "is a very peculiar one, standing somewhat apart from the main channels of mathematical research. But there can be no question as to the extraordinary insight and ingenuity which he has shown in treating it, nor any doubt that the memoir is one of the most remarkable published in England for many years".
Ramanujan was elected to a Trinity College Fellowship, in October 1918, which was a Prize Fellowship worth £250 a year for six years with no duties or conditions. These awards acted as great incentives to Ramanujan who discovered some of the most beautiful theorems in mathematics, subsequently.

Ramanujan suffered illnesses before and after his marriage to Janaki (1909) and before his departure to England. From all accounts available it appears that his health was reasonably good during the first three years of his stay in Cambridge, despite his strict vegetarian diet, the food shortages and his own 'cooking only once a day or two'. This was also his most productive period in Cambridge. From May 1917, when he was first admitted to the Nursing Hostel in Cambridge for 5 months, he seems to have been in and out of TB Sanatoria - Mendip Hills in Somerset (2-3 weeks in Oct. 1917), Matlock House in Derbyshire (Nov. 1917 - June 1918), Fitzroy House in London (June - Dec. 1918) and Colinette House, Putney (end of Dec. 1918) - until his departure to India in March 1919.

Symptoms of improvement showed, after considerable treatment for tuberculosis, in the autumn of 1918. He was able to meet all his medical expenses incurred during his illness out of his earnings accumulated through frugal living.

Ramanujan was persuaded by Hardy to return to India with the hope that he would recover soon and return to take up the Trinity College Fellowship awarded to him for five years.

After completing nearly five years at Cambridge, early in 1919, when Ramanujan appeared to have recovered sufficiently to withstand the rigours of a long voyage to India, he left England on 27th February 1919 by S.S. Nagoya. Four weeks later on 27th March he arrived at Bombay and soon after at Madras, thin, pale and emaciated, but with a scientific standing and reputation such as no Indian enjoyed ever before.

Most unfortunately, his precarious health did not improve, on his return to India. Fevers relapsed and in addition, his wife recalled that he suffered severe bouts of stomach pain too ["Ramanujan: The Man and the Mathematician", S.R. Ranganathan, Asia Publishing House, 1967]. Ramanujan was subject to fits of depression, had a premonition of his death and was a difficult patient. He spent 3 months in Madras, 2 months in Kodumudi and 4 months at Kumbakonam. When his condition showed signs of further deterioration, after great persuasion, Ramanujan was brought to Madras for expert medical treatment, in January 1920. Despite all the tender attention he could get from his wife who nursed him throughout this period, and the best medical attention from the doctors, his untimely end came on 26th April 1920, at Chetput, Madras, when Ramanujan was 32 years, 4 months and 4 days old.