Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920), Indian mathematical genius. Ramanujan was born in a small Indian village and worked as a junior clerk in Madras. He had only an elementary mathematical education at school and yet was able to rediscover much of the mathematics that had originally been discovered by some of the best mathematicians of the 19th century, and to arrive at many completely new results. After a two-year fellowship at Madras University he moved to Cambridge University, UK, to study under Godfrey Hardy, who was astonished by Ramanujan's brilliance. A devout Hindu and strict vegetarian, he returned to India in 1919 and died there of tuberculosis the following year.