Abstract of the talk -

Ramanujan’s mathematics had a mystical quality. Very often, his results seem to pop out from nowhere. In this popular level talk, we mention some such works. We start with a 4 x 4 magic square starting with his date of birth, which has many interesting properties beyond a normal magic square. His famous Taxicab number and its relation with a special case of famous Fermat’s Last Theorem (Conjecture) will be mentioned. Ramnaujan provided a series giving rise to the fastest algorithm for evaluating . Besides a curious function created by him, we also discuss a problem, involving infinite radicals, posed by Ramanujan in 1911. Then we show how he solved instantaneously all the roots of a so-called Brahmagupta’s equation arising out of a puzzle posed to him by Prof. P. C. Mahalanobis in 1914. A short discussion on highly composite numbers and his celebrated result on partitioning of a number, the product of a happy collaboration with his mentor Prof. G. H. Hardy, is included. Finally we present Ramanujan’s primes and a couple of other magical formulas.