About Srinivasa Ramanujan & His Magic Square

Learn about the genius behind the magic, and how his date of birth became a legendary 4×4 magic square.

Who was Srinivasa Ramanujan?

Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920) was an Indian mathematician who made extraordinary contributions to number theory, infinite series, continued fractions and many other branches of mathematics, often working with almost no formal training.

Despite facing many difficulties in his early life, his letters containing mathematical results impressed the famous mathematician G. H. Hardy at Cambridge. Ramanujan later worked with Hardy and published several groundbreaking papers.

Ramanujan’s Birthday Magic Square

Ramanujan created a special 4×4 magic square using his own date of birth:

  • Day: 22
  • Month: 12
  • Year: 1887 → split into 18 (century) and 87 (year)

The first row of his magic square is:

22   12   18   87

The rest of the cells are carefully chosen so that every row, every column, and both main diagonals add up to the same number – the magic sum.

How does RAM_MagicSquare work?

Our generator follows a similar pattern. You provide:

  • DD – Day
  • MM – Month
  • YYYY – Full year

From the year we compute:

  • CC – Century (first two digits)
  • YY – Last two digits of the year

The first row becomes:

[DD, MM, CC, YY]

Then a specific set of formulas is used to fill the other rows so that all sums match. The magic square you see is uniquely based on your own date of birth.