Dr. Vinaykumar Vishwanath Acharya
Associate Professor – Mathematics, Fergusson College (Autonomous), Pune
Life Member, Deccan Education Society
We are celebrating birth anniversary of Srinivas Ramanujan as national mathematics day. He was born on December 22,1887. Ramanujan was a genius Mathematician. In his small life span he did important contributions in the field of Mathematics.
Mathematics has its origins in the ancient civilisations. One of the first concept which evolved was when men and women started living in caves with their pets. Human mind at some point of time realised that on a particular day less pets returned and on some other day more pets returned. Then the concept of counting evolved. Thai was possibly done using stones. The number of animals left was counted using the stones. Possibly at that time if someone had asked the lady about the number of pets she had then she would show them by the number of stones she used to keep in a bag or some secluded spot. When the pets used to return, she used to throw the stone out of the bag as the pets used to enter the cave. If all the stones were thrown out then she used to fill happy that all the pets have returned. Sometimes there used to be more animals as some from the jungle might be getting mixed with the pets. Sometimes stones were remaining in the bag which used to mean that some pets are missing.
Thus, we can see that the concept of inequality i.e. less than, greater than or equal to was the first concept which got evolved. Later the concept of mapping or function got evolved. Then in the due course of time, stones were replaced by tally marks and slowly numbers got evolved. Since then Mathematics got evolved due to the many talented minds across the globe. We use Mathematics in our every day life which may involve very high level of Mathematics such as Cryptography or we use Mathematics unknowingly while walking or driving a motorcycle. Mathematics exists every where.
For contributing articles for the blog mail to darshan.bagade@imdr.edu