title: Gwen Stefani

text: In 2014, Stefani announced the production of an animated series about her and the Harajuku Girls. Along with Vision Animation and Moody Street Kids, Stefani has helped create the show which features herself, Love, Angel, Music, and Baby as the band, HJ5, who fight evil whilst trying to pursue their music career. Mattel was the global toy licensee and the series itself, "Kuu Kuu Harajuku" was distributed worldwide by DHX Media.


title: Gwen Stefani

text: In 2018, Stefani had reportedly filed to trademark P8NT for a potential line of "make-up, skincare, fragrance and hair dyes", and in March 2022, she launched a makeup brand called GXVE Beauty.


title: Gwen Stefani

text: Stefani began dating her bandmate Tony Kanal, soon after he joined the band. She stated that she was heavily invested in that relationship, and commented that "...all I ever did was look at Tony and pray that God would let me have a baby with him." The band almost split up when Kanal ended the relationship. Their break-up inspired Stefani lyrically, and many of "Tragic Kingdom"s songs, such as "Don't Speak", "Sunday Morning", and "Hey You!", chronicle the ups and downs of their relationship. Many years later, Stefani co-wrote her song "Cool" about their relationship as friends for her 2004 debut solo album "Love. Angel. Music. Baby."


title: Gwen Stefani

text: Stefani met Bush lead singer and guitarist Gavin Rossdale in 1995, when No Doubt and headlining band Bush performed at a holiday concert for radio station KROQ. They married on September 14, 2002, with a wedding in St Paul's, Covent Garden, London. A second wedding was held in Los Angeles two weeks later. Stefani has three sons with Rossdale, born in May 26, 2006 August 21, 2008, and February 28, 2014. On August 3, 2015, Stefani filed for divorce from Rossdale, citing "irreconcilable differences". Their divorce was finalized on April 8, 2016, in which Rossdale agreed to the "unequal split" of their assets.


title: Gwen Stefani

text: Stefani announced her relationship with Blake Shelton, country music artist and "The Voice" co-star, in November 2015. The couple announced their engagement on October 27, 2020, and married at a chapel on July 3, 2021, at Shelton's Oklahoma ranch.


title: Gwen Stefani

text: Stefani and Shelton have collaborated on music numerous times since becoming a couple. In 2015, the musicians co-wrote the song "Go Ahead and Break My Heart" as they navigated the beginning of their relationship. The duet was featured on Shelton's 2016 album, "If I'm Honest". In 2020, their duets "Nobody But You" and "Happy Anywhere" both reached No. 1 on the Billboard US Country Airplay chart. They also collaborated on the song "You Make It Feel Like Christmas," featured on Stefani's 2017 holiday album of the same name.


title: Gwen Stefani

text: AXS called Stefani a "powerhouse" vocalist with an "incredible" range. "The New York Times" considered Stefani's vocals "mannered" and commended her for "kick[ing] her vibrato addiction". IGN described Stefani as having a "unique vocal prowess". The "Chicago Tribune" stated that Stefani had a "brash alto".


title: Gwen Stefani

text: Stefani's debut album "Love. Angel. Music. Baby." took influence from a variety of 1980s genres, which included electropop, new wave, dance-rock, hip hop, R&B, soul, and disco music. Stefani cited early Madonna, Lisa Lisa, Club Nouveau, Prince, New Order and the Cure as major influences for the album. Several of the album's tracks were designed for clubs, and contained electro beats meant for dancing. Referencing fashion and wealth in the album, the singer name-drops several designers who she considered inspirations in her personal career, such as John Galliano and Vivienne Westwood. Her second studio album "The Sweet Escape" resembles musically its predecessor while exploring more modern pop sounds, dabbling heavily into genres such as dance-pop and rap. It carried on the same themes developed in "Love. Angel. Music. Baby.", and was criticized for doing so.


title: Gwen Stefani

text: "This Is What the Truth Feels Like", the singer's third album, continued Stefani's endeavors with the pop genre, while incorporating music from a variety of other genres including reggae, disco, and dancehall, as well as the use of guitars. Stefani's lyrics shifted towards events that had recently occurred in her personal life, such as her divorce from Rossdale, and new relationship with Shelton. The singer stated her album was more about forgiveness than revenge.


title: Gwen Stefani

text: Stefani began wearing a bindi in the mid-1990s after attending several family gatherings with Tony Kanal, who is of Indian heritage. During No Doubt's breakthrough, Stefani wore the forehead decoration in several of the band's music videos and briefly popularized the accessory in 1997. Since the 1995 music video for "Just a Girl", Stefani has been known for her midriff and frequently wears tops that expose it. Stefani's makeup design generally includes light face powder, bright red lipstick, and arched eyebrows; she wrote about the subject in a song titled "Magic's in the Makeup" for No Doubt's "Return of Saturn", asking "If the magic's in the makeup/Then who am I?". Stefani is a natural brunette, but her hair has not been its natural color since she was in ninth grade. Since late 1994, she has usually had platinum blonde hair. Stefani discussed this in the song "Platinum Blonde Life" on "Rock Steady" and played original blonde bombshell Jean Harlow in the 2004 biopic "The Aviator". She dyed her hair blue in 1998 and pink in 1999, when she appeared on the cover of "Return of Saturn" with pink hair.


title: Gwen Stefani

text: In 2006, Stefani modified her image, inspired by that of Michelle Pfeiffer's character Elvira Hancock in the 1983 film "Scarface". The reinvented image included a symbol consisting of two back-to-back 'G's, which appears on a diamond-encrusted key she wears on a necklace and which became a motif in the promotion of "The Sweet Escape". Stefani raised concerns in January 2007 about her rapid weight loss following her pregnancy. She later stated that she had been on a diet since the sixth grade to fit in size 4 clothing. A wax figure of Stefani was unveiled at Madame Tussauds Las Vegas at The Venetian on September 22, 2010. The release of Stefani's first solo album brought attention to her entourage of four Harajuku Girls, who appear in outfits influenced by Gothic Lolita fashion, and are named for the area around the Harajuku Station of Tokyo. Stefani's clothing also took influence from Japanese fashion, in a style described as a combination between Christian Dior and Japan. The dancers are featured in her music videos, press coverage, and on the album cover for "Love. Angel. Music. Baby.", with a song named for and dedicated to them on the album. They were also featured in, and the namesake for, Stefani's Harajuku Lovers Tour. "Forbes" magazine reported that Stefani earned $27 million between June 2007 to June 2008 for her tour, fashion line and commercials, making her the world's 10th highest paid music personality at the time.


title: Gwen Stefani

text: Throughout her career as a solo artist, Stefani has won several music awards, including one Grammy Award, four MTV Video Music Awards, one American Music Award, one Brit Award, and two "Billboard" Music Awards. With No Doubt, she has won two Grammy Awards. In 2005, "Rolling Stone" called her "the only true female rock star left on radio or MTV" and featured her on the magazine's cover. Stefani received the Style Icon Award at the first People Magazine Awards in 2014. In 2016, the singer was honored at the Radio Disney Music Awards with a Hero Award, which is given to artists based on their personal contributions to various charitable works.


title: Gwen Stefani

text: Stefani has been referred to as a "Pop Princess" by several contemporary music critics. In 2012, VH1 listed the singer at the number thirteen on their list of "100 Greatest Women in Music". Stefani's work has influenced artists and musicians including Hayley Williams of Paramore, Best Coast, Kim Petras, Teddy Sinclair, Katy Perry, Charli XCX, Kesha, Ava Max, Marina Diamandis, Rita Ora, Keke Palmer, Bebe Rexha, Dua Lipa, the Stunners, Kelly Clarkson, Sky Ferreira, Kirstin Maldonado of Pentatonix, Olivia Rodrigo, and Cover Drive. The latter group, a quartet of Barbados musicians, claimed that both Stefani and No Doubt had helped influence their music, to which the lead singer of the group, Amanda Reifer, said that she would "pass out" if she ever met Stefani.


title: Gwen Stefani

text: The lead single from "Love. Angel. Music. Baby.", "What You Waiting For?", was considered by "Pitchfork" to be one of Stefani's best singles, and would later place it at number sixteen on their "Top 50 Singles of 2004" list. "Hollaback Girl" from "Love. Angel. Music. Baby." would go on to be the first song to digitally sell an excess of one million copies in the United States; it was certified platinum in both the United States and Australia, and peaked at number forty-one on "Billboard"s decade-end charts for 2000–09. Since its release in 2005, "Hollaback Girl" has been called Stefani's "signature song" by "Rolling Stone".


title: Gwen Stefani

text: Following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, Stefani donated $1 million to Save the Children's Japan Earthquake–Tsunami Children in Emergency Fund. Stefani also ran an auction on eBay from April 11 to 25, 2011, allowing participants to bid on vintage clothing items from her personal wardrobe and custom T-shirts designed and signed by her, as well as an admission to a private Harajuku-themed tea party hosted by her on June 7, 2011, at Los Angeles' first Japanese-style maid café and pop art space, Royal/T, with proceeds from the auction going to Save the Children's relief effort.


title: Gwen Stefani

text: At the amfAR gala during the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, Stefani auctioned off the lacy black dress she wore at the event for charity, raising over $125,000. A representative for designer Michael Angel, who helped Stefani with the design and worked as a stylist, said that Angel created the gown, not Stefani. In response, Angel released a statement confirming that the dress was designed by Stefani for L.A.M.B. to wear and be auctioned off at the amfAR gala. Stefani hosted a fundraiser with First Lady Michelle Obama in August 2012 at the singer's Beverly Hills home.


title: Gwen Stefani

text: The singer-songwriter supports the LGBT community. When asked in a 2019 "Pride Source" interview about how she would react if one of her children came out as gay, Stefani stated "I would be blessed with a gay son; [...] I just want my boys to be healthy and happy. And I just ask God to guide me to be a good mother, which is not an easy thing at all."


title: 2022 WTA Tour

text: The 2022 WTA Tour (branded as the 2022 Hologic WTA Tour for sponsorship reasons) was the global elite women's professional tennis circuit organized by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) for the 2022 tennis season. The 2022 WTA Tour calendar comprised the Grand Slam tournaments (supervised by the International Tennis Federation (ITF)), the WTA 1000 tournaments, the WTA 500 tournaments, the WTA 250 tournaments, the Billie Jean King Cup (organized by the ITF), and the year-end championships (the WTA Finals).


title: 2022 WTA Tour

text: On December 1, 2021, WTA chairman Steve Simon announced that all tournaments scheduled to be held in both China and Hong Kong were suspended beginning in 2022, due to concerns regarding the security and well-being of tennis player Peng Shuai after her allegations of sexual assault against Zhang Gaoli, a high-ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party.


title: 2022 WTA Tour

text: As part of international sports' reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the WTA, the ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals), the ITF, and the four Grand Slam tournaments jointly decided that players from Belarus and Russia would not be allowed to play under the names or flags of their countries, but would remain eligible to play events until further notice. On 20 May 2022, the ATP and WTA also announced that ranking points would not be awarded for Wimbledon, due to a decision by the All England Club to prohibit players representing Belarus or Russia from participating in the tournament.


title: 2022 WTA Tour

text: In March 2022, Hologic, an American medical diagnostics and technology company, signed a multi-year deal to become the first WTA Tour title sponsor since 2010 after the WTA's partnership with Sony Ericsson had ended. Hologic cited the WTA's stance on withholding events in China in the wake of Peng's allegations as one of its factors in deciding to sponsor the circuit.


title: 2022 WTA Tour

text: The COVID-19 pandemic affected tournaments on both the ATP and WTA tours. The following tournaments were cancelled due to the pandemic or other reasons.


title: 2022 WTA Tour

text: These tables present the number of singles (S), doubles (D), and mixed doubles (X) titles won by each player and each nation during the season, within all the tournament categories of the 2022 WTA Tour: the Grand Slam tournaments, the year-end championships (the WTA Finals), the WTA Premier tournaments (WTA 1000 and WTA 500), and the WTA 250. The players/nations are sorted by:


title: 2022 WTA Tour

text: The following players achieved their career high ranking in this season inside top 50 (players who made their top 10 debut indicated in bold):


title: 2022 WTA Tour

text: Below are the tables for the WTA rankings and the yearly WTA Race rankings of the top 20 singles players, doubles players, and doubles teams.


title: The Flash (film)

text: The Flash is an upcoming American superhero film based on the DC Comics character of the same name. Produced by Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Studios, Double Dream, and The Disco Factory, and set for distribution by Warner Bros. Pictures, it is intended to be the 13th film in the DC Extended Universe (DCEU). The film is directed by Andy Muschietti from a screenplay by Christina Hodson and stars Ezra Miller as Barry Allen / The Flash alongside Ron Livingston, Michael Keaton, Kiersey Clemons, Michael Shannon, Antje Traue, Sasha Calle, and Ben Affleck. In the film, Barry travels back in time to prevent his mother's murder, which brings unintended consequences.


title: The Flash (film)

text: Development of a film featuring the Flash began in the late 1980s, with multiple writers and directors attached to the project through 2014. The film was then redeveloped as a part of the DCEU, with Miller cast as the title character. Multiple directors were attached to the film over the following years, with Seth Grahame-Smith, Rick Famuyiwa, and the duo of John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein each departing the project due to creative differences. Muschietti and Hodson joined the film in July 2019, and pre-production began in January 2020. The film is influenced by the comic book storyline "Flashpoint", featuring multiple DC Comics characters including both Affleck and Keaton reprising their respective versions of Batman. Filming took place from April to October 2021 at Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden, and on location around the United Kingdom.


title: The Flash (film)

text: "The Flash" is scheduled to be released in the United States on June 16, 2023, following multiple delays caused by the director changes, the COVID-19 pandemic, and post-production setbacks. A sequel is in development.


title: The Flash (film)

text: The Flash travels back in time to prevent his mother's murder, which brings unintended consequences to his timeline.


title: The Flash (film)

text: Maribel Verdú portrays Nora Allen, Barry's mother who was murdered in his youth. Temuera Morrison, who portrays Aquaman's father Thomas Curry in "Aquaman" (2018), is also expected to be in the film. Additionally, Saoirse-Monica Jackson, Rudy Mancuso, and Luke Brandon Field have been cast in undisclosed roles.


title: The Flash (film)

text: Development of a film based on the DC Comics character the Flash began in the late 1980s when Warner Bros. hired comic book writer Jeph Loeb to write a screenplay. Warner Bros. hired David S. Goyer to write, direct, and produce a new version of "The Flash" in December 2004 after he impressed them with his script for "Batman Begins" (2005). Goyer approached Ryan Reynolds to portray Wally West / The Flash after working with him on the Marvel Comics-based film "" (2004), and intended to have the character Barry Allen appear in a supporting role. Goyer was influenced for the film's tone by Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man" trilogy and the Flash comic book runs by Mike Baron, Mark Waid, and Geoff Johns. By early February 2007, Goyer left the project due to creative differences with the studio, and Shawn Levy was hired to direct and oversee the writing of a new draft written by Chris Brancato, which used elements from Goyer's script. Later that month, Warner Bros. announced the development of a Justice League film with Michelle and Kieran Mulroney writing the screenplay. George Miller signed on to direct the film, entitled "", in September, with Adam Brody cast as the Flash. It was envisioned as the start of a franchise with planned sequels and spin-offs, including the Flash film.


title: The Flash (film)

text: Levy left "The Flash" in October 2007 due to scheduling conflicts with "" (2009). David Dobkin took over as director and began developing the film as a spin-off from "Justice League: Mortal" with a focus on Wally West. Craig Wright was writing a script for the film the next month, before "Justice League: Mortal" was canceled and Warner Bros. set a 2008 release for "The Flash". Further development was delayed due to the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike. Charles Roven joined the project as a producer by July 2009, with Geoff Johns consulting and writing a film treatment that Dan Mazeau adapted into a screenplay. In October, Roven said the studio was not confident enough in their take to greenlight the film, though Mazeau disputed this and said the film was moving forward as planned. In June 2010, "Green Lantern" (2011) writers Greg Berlanti, Michael Green, and Marc Guggenheim were hired to write a new treatment for "The Flash" based on a recent comics run by Johns that featured Barry Allen.


title: The Flash (film)

text: Warner Bros. was planning a new shared universe of films based on DC Comics by July 2013, and had tentative plans to release a "Flash" film in 2016. In October 2014, Warner Bros. and DC Films announced a slate of planned projects as part of the new DC Extended Universe (DCEU). "The Flash" was set for release on March 23, 2018, with Ezra Miller set to star in the film as Barry Allen / The Flash; Miller first made cameo appearances in "" (2016) and "Suicide Squad" (2016), starred in the team-up film "Justice League" (2017), and briefly appeared in the Arrowverse crossover event "Crisis on Infinite Earths" (2019–20) which acknowledged a wider DC Multiverse. Warner Bros. offered James Wan the choice of directing a movie about either Aquaman or the Flash, and he ultimately chose to make "Aquaman" (2018). By April 2015, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were writing a story treatment for the "Flash" film with the possibility of directing it. After they decided to direct "" (2018) instead, Seth Grahame-Smith entered negotiations to write and direct the film based on Lord and Miller's treatment in October 2015. Grahame-Smith was set to make his directorial debut with the film, with Roven producing, and Deborah and Zack Snyder executive producing. In February 2016, the film's release date was moved forward to March 16, 2018. Grahame-Smith left the project that April, citing creative differences. Warner Bros. chose to retain his script, and he was still expected to be involved in the project moving forward, while Lord and Miller were also still involved as producers. A search for a replacement director began immediately.


title: The Flash (film)

text: Rick Famuyiwa was hired to take over as director in June 2016, with Warner Bros. feeling that Famuyiwa's vision for the film would both resonate with younger audiences and also be compatible with Grahame-Smith's existing script. Filming was expected to begin later in 2016 and was not believed to be delayed by the director change. Famuyiwa's top choice to portray the film's female lead, Iris West, was Kiersey Clemons who he had worked with on "Dope" (2015). Rita Ora and Lucy Boynton were also in the running for the role, but Clemons was cast as the character at the end of July. At that time, Warner Bros. gave the film's release date to "Tomb Raider" (2018), leaving "The Flash" without a release date. In August, Ray Fisher was set to appear in the film, reprising his role as Victor Stone / Cyborg from "Batman v Superman" and "Justice League". Famuyiwa completed a revision of the script a month later, when Gal Gadot was set to reprise her role as Diana Prince / Wonder Woman from "Batman v Superman", "Wonder Woman" (2017), and "Justice League", and Billy Crudup was in negotiations to portray Barry's father Henry Allen. Clemons and Crudup both filmed cameo appearances for "Justice League" after being cast in "The Flash". Pre-production began by October ahead of a filming start in March 2017, scheduled before another commitment that Miller had in July. At the end of October, Famuyiwa left the project after not being able to "come together creatively" with the studio, who disagreed with the more mature direction that Famuyiwa wanted to take the film.


title: The Flash (film)

text: The film was put on hold while the studio searched for a new director and Miller prepared to film "" (2018). During that time, Warner Bros. decided to take the film in a new direction and in January 2017, Joby Harold was hired to do a page-one rewrite of the script. He handed in a draft by May, when the studio's top choices to direct were Robert Zemeckis and Matthew Vaughn. Both had expressed interest in the project, but had potential scheduling issues that could prevent them from taking it on. Raimi, Marc Webb, and Jordan Peele had already turned down offers to direct the film, as did Ben Affleck who portrayed Bruce Wayne / Batman in previous DCEU films. At the July 2017 San Diego Comic-Con, the film was announced with the new title "Flashpoint", based on the comic book of the same title in which Allen travels back in time to save his mother's life and accidentally creates an alternate timeline. Dan Mazeau contributed to the script during this time. Johns confirmed in November that the "Flashpoint" concept would allow the film to tell a unique story about Batman, with the comic book storyline exploring a timeline where Thomas Wayne is Batman; Jeffrey Dean Morgan expressed interest in reprising his role as Thomas Wayne from "Batman v Superman".


title: The Flash (film)

text: In January 2018, the filmmaking duo John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein entered negotiations to write and direct the film after the studio chose not to wait for Zemeckis's schedule to be free. Daley and Goldstein were confirmed as directors in March, and the film's title reverted to "The Flash" the next month. Filming was expected to begin in Atlanta in February 2019, but Miller's commitments to "" (2022) delayed filming again. "The Flash" was aiming for a 2021 release at that point. In mid-March 2019, Miller was revealed to be writing a new version of the film's script with comic book writer Grant Morrison. Miller disagreed with the light-hearted approach to the film that Daley and Goldstein were taking, though that was Warner Bros.' preferred direction for it. The new script could be submitted to the studio by the end of the month, and if the studio did not like Miller and Morrison's take there was potential for the actor to leave the film; Miller's holding deal to star in the film was expected to end in May. Morrison later said that Miller had not been happy with the prior scripts and approached Morrison with their ideas, and the pair were given two weeks by Warner Bros. to write the script in Scotland. Morrison described their script as "a Flash story", which he felt was a more science fiction story similar to "Back to the Future" (1985), but said that the studio wanted to explore the multiverse and other DC characters with the film instead. Morrison also denied reports that Miller wanted the film to have a dark tone, and said their script had dark aspects related to the "Flashpoint" story. The studio rejected Miller and Morrison's script in May, but asked Miller to remain as star of the film. Daley and Goldstein left the project in July, and Warner Bros. chose Christina Hodson to write a new screenplay for the film after writing their DC film "Birds of Prey" (2020). Andy Muschietti entered negotiations to direct the film, with his sister Barbara set to produce alongside Michael Disco. A January 2020 pre-production start was expected. The involvement of Andy Muschietti and Hodson was confirmed in November 2019, when filming was expected to begin in 2021 after Miller finished filming "The Secrets of Dumbledore". A month later, Warner Bros. scheduled "The Flash" for release on July 1, 2022.


title: The Flash (film)

text: Andy Muschietti said in January 2020 that the film would still adapt elements of the "Flashpoint" comic book storyline, but the film would be telling a different version of that story. In April, the film's release was moved forward to June 3, 2022, when Warner Bros. shifted their schedule due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That June, Michael Keaton entered early negotiations to reprise his role as Bruce Wayne / Batman from Tim Burton's "Batman" (1989) and "Batman Returns" (1992). Fisher discussed his role as Cyborg in the film with Muschietti that month, before Warner Bros. set a two-week shoot for Fisher to film what was referred to as a cameo appearance alongside other Justice League actors. Fisher said the studio only offered to pay him a fraction of his traditional salary for reprising the role. In August, Keaton was confirmed to be appearing in the film, and Affleck agreed to reprise his version of Batman. Muschietti explained that the film would be introducing the idea of the multiverse to general audiences by including multiple versions of characters and acknowledging past film franchises based on DC Comics as alternate universes. It was important for Muschietti to include Affleck in the film since his version of Batman is the "baseline" for the DCEU, and he felt the introduction of Keaton's Batman would not work as well without first seeing the Flash's relationship with Affleck's Batman. Affleck chose to return, after saying he had retired from the character, because he would have a smaller role in the film.


title: The Flash (film)

text: During the virtual DC FanDome event "Explore the Multiverse" in September 2020, Barbara Muschietti said the film would feature many characters from the DC Universe and the Flash would serve as the bridge between them and their different timelines. She added that the film would be used to restart the continuity of the DCEU without disregarding the events of the prior films. Crudup, who left the film during the changes in directors, entered negotiations to rejoin the project a month later. Clemons' involvement was uncertain at that point. The film's release was pushed back to November 4, 2022, due to further pandemic-related delays, and filming was set to begin in March 2021 in London. Warner Bros. had written Cyborg out of the film by January 2021 after Fisher refused to work on any project that DC Films president Walter Hamada was involved in. Fisher said this was due to Hamada's handling of an investigation into the on-set behavior of "Justice League" replacement director Joss Whedon. The role of Cyborg was not expected to be recast. Andy and Barbara Muschietti arrived in the United Kingdom to prepare for production, with filming set to begin in April at Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden, after Miller finished on "The Secrets of Dumbledore". In February, construction for sets at Leavesden Studios had begun, Crudup was confirmed to be returning, and Sasha Calle was cast as Supergirl. Calle was chosen from a group of more than 425 actresses that also included Bruna Marquezine. All auditions for the role, as well as chemistry tests with Miller, took place over Zoom.


title: The Flash (film)

text: In March 2021, Clemons signed a new deal to star as Iris West in the film after her role in "Justice League" was cut (though the cameo was restored in the 2021 director's cut "Zack Snyder's Justice League"). Maribel Verdú was cast to portray Barry Allen's mother Nora Allen, but Crudup was forced to drop out of the film due to scheduling conflicts with his series "The Morning Show". The role of Henry Allen was expected to be recast. At the end of March, Keaton said he had received an older version of the script but had not yet read it, and would have to read the latest draft before deciding if he could commit to the film. He also cited the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom as a concern for his involvement, as well as balancing his other commitments. Shortly after, Ron Livingston was cast to replace Crudup as Henry Allen, with Ian Loh cast as a young Barry Allen, and Saoirse-Monica Jackson and Rudy Mancuso joining in undisclosed roles. Before filming began, Keaton was confirmed to be starring in the film, with Andy Muschietti believing Keaton's decision to join "The Flash" was due to the script that he had been sent. Muschietti said Keaton felt honored to play Batman again. The Muschiettis formed a production company, Double Dream, to co-produce the film, and Marianne Jenkins was revealed as an executive producer. Fisher said it would be a "bummer" if the situation surrounding his involvement in the film was not resolved, and said he would return to the role of Cyborg for the film if Warner Bros. were to make amends with him.


title: The Flash (film)

text: Principal photography began on April 19, 2021, at Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden, in England, under the working title "Baby Shower". Henry Braham served as cinematographer. In early May, filming took place at Burghley House in Stamford, Lincolnshire, which doubled for Wayne Manor. In mid-June, Miller, Clemons, Keaton, and Calle filmed scenes at St Paul's Cathedral in London, with the surrounding locations designed to portray Central City. Filming was also set to occur later that month in Edinburgh and Glasgow—doubling for Gotham City—for scenes with Affleck and Keaton. In late July, filming continued in Glasgow at Ingram Street, George Square, John Street, and Cochrane Street, and involved several vehicles, while filming with the Batmobile occurred in George Square. On July 29, filming was halted after a camera operator on a motorcycle shooting behind the Batcycle on Renfield Street collided with it near West George Street. The operator was injured, but not "seriously hurt". In August, Braham said the film was "technically complex" despite not being based in reality, and called the concept of featuring the different generations of comic books in it fantastic. In early September, Luke Brandon Field said he had joined the cast. Filming wrapped on October 18, 2021.


title: The Flash (film)

text: Paul Machliss and Jason Ballantine serve as the film's editors, while John "DJ" Desjardin serves as the visual effects supervisor after previously doing so for several DCEU films. In December 2021, Michael Shannon and Antje Traue were revealed to be reprising their roles from "Man of Steel" (2013) as General Zod and Faora-Ul, respectively. Former co-directors of the film Francis Daley and Goldstein were also confirmed to be receiving story credit for the film alongside Hodson. Temuera Morrison, who previously portrayed Aquaman's father Thomas Curry in "Aquaman" (2018), was reported to be in the film in February 2022.


title: The Flash (film)

text: In March 2022, Warner Bros. adjusted its release schedule due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the workload of visual effects vendors. "The Flash" was moved to June 23, 2023, and "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom" was also moved from 2022 to 2023, to allow time for their visual effects work to be completed; "The Flash" had around 2,500 visual effects shots that needed to be completed. The following month, the final writing credits were revealed: Hodson received screenplay credit; Daley, Goldstein, and Harold received screen story credit; and off-screen credit for additional writing material went to Rebecca Drysdale, Famiyuwa, Grahame-Smith, Johns, Lord, Chris Miller, Ezra Miller, Morrison, and Adam Sztykiel. In May, "Deadline Hollywood" reported that an unspecified "high-profile" comic book film releasing in 2023, which had its script recently submitted to the Writers Guild of America (WGA), had a total of 45 writers who were involved in the script at various stages of its development, with some commentators believing this film was "The Flash", due to the number of publicly known writers who previously were attached. Miller participated in "regularly scheduled additional photography" in mid-2022.


title: The Flash (film)

text: Following several controversial incidents and arrests involving Ezra Miller throughout 2022, Warner Bros. Discovery (the then-newly formed parent company of Warner Bros. Pictures) began feeling mounting pressure to consider different options for the film after previously hoping that its delayed release would help avoid the controversy. In August, the studio was considering the following options: if Miller received professional help they could give an interview explaining their behavior and then do limited press for the film, which would be released as planned; if Miller did not receive help then they could be excluded from all press for the film and the role would potentially be recast for future projects; or if the situation with Miller deteriorated further, the film could be canceled as a "last resort". The latter would be an "unprecedented move" due to its large $200 million budget, though it would come after Warner Bros. Discovery had already canceled the nearly-complete 90-million-dollar film "Batgirl" that was being produced for the streaming service HBO Max. The studio was not considering replacing Miller with another actor in this film due to them portraying multiple characters and appearing in nearly every scene. The film was considered to be "key" for the studio's future DCEU plans, and had been received well during test screenings despite Miller's legal troubles. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said at the time that he had seen "The Flash", it had received positive responses from the studio, and they were committed to releasing it in theaters. Miller released a public apology through their representative soon afterward and announced that they were seeking professional treatment for "complex mental health issues". Machliss stated that the film was the first to use new technology to feature different versions of an actor on screen.


title: The Flash (film)

text: In December 2022, the film's release date was moved forward to June 16, 2023, following positive test screenings, while "The Hollywood Reporter" reported that Henry Cavill and Jason Mamoa were set to make cameo appearances as Superman and Aquaman, respectively, and that Cavill had filmed his role in September. The studio was reportedly debating on retaining the cameos depending on their future plans for the characters, with plans for the film not yet finalized as it had yet to enter picture lock. Cavill's cameo, along with one Gal Gadot had filmed as Wonder Woman, were soon reported to have been cut, after DC Studios chose not to move forward with sequels to "Man of Steel" and "Wonder Woman 1984" (2020). Cavill was paid $250,000 for his cameo in "The Flash".


title: The Flash (film)

text: Benjamin Wallfisch was set to compose the film's score by April 2021, reuniting with Andy Muschietti after working on his films "It" (2017) and "It Chapter Two" (2019). Wallfisch also previously wrote the score for DC's "Shazam!" (2019).


title: The Flash (film)

text: Miller debuted the first footage from the film at the virtual DC FanDome event in October 2021. They said there was not enough footage available to make a full trailer or teaser, but William Hughes at "The A.V. Club" felt the footage could comfortably be categorized as a teaser. He said being able to see it was proof of the film actually being made after its long and troubled production history. "Polygon" Matt Patches and "io9" James Whitbrook both highlighted the footage as the beginning of the DC multiverse on film, with its hints at Keaton's version of Batman and the reveal that Miller would portray multiple versions of Barry Allen. In February 2022, more footage was released as part of a teaser for Warner Bros.' 2022 slate of DC films, which also included "The Batman", "Black Adam", and "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom" (before "The Flash" and "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom" were delayed to 2023). A new trailer was shown at Warner Bros.' CinemaCon panel in April 2022, and was noted by attendees for Keaton's Batman reusing the line "You wanna get nuts? Let's get nuts" from "Batman".


title: The Flash (film)

text: DC Comics is set to publish a three-issue prequel comic book limited series titled "The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive", written by Kenny Porter with art by Ricardo López Ortiz, Juan Ferreyra, and Jason Howard. The first issue was released on September 13, 2022, and features a variant cover by Andy Muschietti, which was followed by the second issue on October 11, and the third issue on November 8. The comic series is set after the events of "Justice League" and depicts Batman training the Flash and the Flash's early days as he attempts to defeat the supervillains Girder, Tar Pit, and the Top. A trade paperback collection of the limited series will also be released.


title: The Flash (film)

text: "The Flash" is scheduled to be released by Warner Bros. Pictures in the United States on June 16, 2023. The film was initially scheduled for release on March 23, 2018, when Warner Bros. first announced their slate of DCEU films, before it was moved to March 16. In July 2016, this release date was given to "Tomb Raider", and "The Flash" was not given another release date until the hiring of Andy Muschietti in July 2019, after which the film was slated for release on July 1, 2022. It was then moved up to June 3, 2022, before being delayed to November 4, 2022, after Warner Bros. shifted its release schedule due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It moved to June 23, 2023, when Warner Bros. again adjusted its release schedule, this time due to the impact of the pandemic on the workload of visual effects vendors, before moving forward a week to June 16, 2023, after positive test screenings.


title: The Flash (film)

text: By October 2022, a script for a sequel had been written by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, who had scribed the "Aquaman" films, in the event "The Flash" performed well. Warner Bros. was not expected to retain Miller for future films due to the actor's controversies and legal issues.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: Srinivasa Ramanujan (; born Srinivasa Ramanujan Aiyangar, ; 22 December 188726 April 1920) was an Indian mathematician. Though he had almost no formal training in pure mathematics, he made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions, including solutions to mathematical problems then considered unsolvable. Ramanujan initially developed his own mathematical research in isolation: according to Hans Eysenck: "He tried to interest the leading professional mathematicians in his work, but failed for the most part. What he had to show them was too novel, too unfamiliar, and additionally presented in unusual ways; they could not be bothered". Seeking mathematicians who could better understand his work, in 1913 he began a postal correspondence with the English mathematician G. H. Hardy at the University of Cambridge, England. Recognising Ramanujan's work as extraordinary, Hardy arranged for him to travel to Cambridge. In his notes, Hardy commented that Ramanujan had produced groundbreaking new theorems, including some that "defeated me completely; I had never seen anything in the least like them before", and some recently proven but highly advanced results.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: During his short life, Ramanujan independently compiled nearly 3,900 results (mostly identities and equations). Many were completely novel; his original and highly unconventional results, such as the Ramanujan prime, the Ramanujan theta function, partition formulae and mock theta functions, have opened entire new areas of work and inspired a vast amount of further research. Of his thousands of results, all but a dozen or two have now been proven correct. "The Ramanujan Journal", a scientific journal, was established to publish work in all areas of mathematics influenced by Ramanujan, and his notebooks—containing summaries of his published and unpublished results—have been analysed and studied for decades since his death as a source of new mathematical ideas. As late as 2012, researchers continued to discover that mere comments in his writings about "simple properties" and "similar outputs" for certain findings were themselves profound and subtle number theory results that remained unsuspected until nearly a century after his death. He became one of the youngest Fellows of the Royal Society and only the second Indian member, and the first Indian to be elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Of his original letters, Hardy stated that a single look was enough to show they could have been written only by a mathematician of the highest calibre, comparing Ramanujan to mathematical geniuses such as Euler and Jacobi.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: In 1919, ill health—now believed to have been hepatic amoebiasis (a complication from episodes of dysentery many years previously)—compelled Ramanujan's return to India, where he died in 1920 at the age of 32. His last letters to Hardy, written in January 1920, show that he was still continuing to produce new mathematical ideas and theorems. His "lost notebook", containing discoveries from the last year of his life, caused great excitement among mathematicians when it was rediscovered in 1976.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: A deeply religious Hindu, Ramanujan credited his substantial mathematical capacities to divinity, and said his family goddess, Namagiri Thayar, revealed his mathematical knowledge to him. He once said, "An equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God."


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: Ramanujan (literally, "younger brother of Rama", a Hindu deity) was born on 22 December 1887 into a Tamil Brahmin Iyengar family in Erode, in present-day Tamil Nadu. His father, Kuppuswamy Srinivasa Iyengar, originally from Thanjavur district, worked as a clerk in a sari shop. His mother, Komalatammal, was a housewife and sang at a local temple. They lived in a small traditional home on Sarangapani Sannidhi Street in the town of Kumbakonam. The family home is now a museum. When Ramanujan was a year and a half old, his mother gave birth to a son, Sadagopan, who died less than three months later. In December 1889, Ramanujan contracted smallpox, but recovered, unlike the 4,000 others who died in a bad year in the Thanjavur district around this time. He moved with his mother to her parents' house in Kanchipuram, near Madras (now Chennai). His mother gave birth to two more children, in 1891 and 1894, both of whom died before their first birthdays.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: On 1 October 1892, Ramanujan was enrolled at the local school. After his maternal grandfather lost his job as a court official in Kanchipuram, Ramanujan and his mother moved back to Kumbakonam, and he was enrolled in Kangayan Primary School. When his paternal grandfather died, he was sent back to his maternal grandparents, then living in Madras. He did not like school in Madras, and tried to avoid attending. His family enlisted a local constable to make sure he attended school. Within six months, Ramanujan was back in Kumbakonam.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: Since Ramanujan's father was at work most of the day, his mother took care of the boy, and they had a close relationship. From her, he learned about tradition and puranas, to sing religious songs, to attend pujas at the temple, and to maintain particular eating habits—all part of Brahmin culture. At Kangayan Primary School, Ramanujan performed well. Just before turning 10, in November 1897, he passed his primary examinations in English, Tamil, geography, and arithmetic with the best scores in the district. That year, Ramanujan entered Town Higher Secondary School, where he encountered formal mathematics for the first time.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: A child prodigy by age 11, he had exhausted the mathematical knowledge of two college students who were lodgers at his home. He was later lent a book written by S. L. Loney on advanced trigonometry. He mastered this by the age of 13 while discovering sophisticated theorems on his own. By 14, he received merit certificates and academic awards that continued throughout his school career, and he assisted the school in the logistics of assigning its 1,200 students (each with differing needs) to its approximately 35 teachers. He completed mathematical exams in half the allotted time, and showed a familiarity with geometry and infinite series. Ramanujan was shown how to solve cubic equations in 1902. He would later develop his own method to solve the quartic. In 1903, he tried to solve the quintic, not knowing that it was impossible to solve with radicals.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: In 1903, when he was 16, Ramanujan obtained from a friend a library copy of "A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics", G. S. Carr's collection of 5,000 theorems. Ramanujan reportedly studied the contents of the book in detail. The next year, Ramanujan independently developed and investigated the Bernoulli numbers and calculated the Euler–Mascheroni constant up to 15 decimal places. His peers at the time said they "rarely understood him" and "stood in respectful awe" of him.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: When he graduated from Town Higher Secondary School in 1904, Ramanujan was awarded the K. Ranganatha Rao prize for mathematics by the school's headmaster, Krishnaswami Iyer. Iyer introduced Ramanujan as an outstanding student who deserved scores higher than the maximum. He received a scholarship to study at Government Arts College, Kumbakonam, but was so intent on mathematics that he could not focus on any other subjects and failed most of them, losing his scholarship in the process. In August 1905, Ramanujan ran away from home, heading towards Visakhapatnam, and stayed in Rajahmundry for about a month. He later enrolled at Pachaiyappa's College in Madras. There, he passed in mathematics, choosing only to attempt questions that appealed to him and leaving the rest unanswered, but performed poorly in other subjects, such as English, physiology, and Sanskrit. Ramanujan failed his Fellow of Arts exam in December 1906 and again a year later. Without an FA degree, he left college and continued to pursue independent research in mathematics, living in extreme poverty and often on the brink of starvation.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: In 1910, after a meeting between the 23-year-old Ramanujan and the founder of the Indian Mathematical Society, V. Ramaswamy Aiyer, Ramanujan began to get recognition in Madras's mathematical circles, leading to his inclusion as a researcher at the University of Madras.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: On 14 July 1909, Ramanujan married Janaki (Janakiammal; 21 March 1899 – 13 April 1994), a girl his mother had selected for him a year earlier and who was ten years old when they married. It was not unusual then for marriages to be arranged with girls at a young age. Janaki was from Rajendram, a village close to Marudur (Karur district) Railway Station. Ramanujan's father did not participate in the marriage ceremony. As was common at that time, Janaki continued to stay at her maternal home for three years after marriage, until she reached puberty. In 1912, she and Ramanujan's mother joined Ramanujan in Madras.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: After the marriage, Ramanujan developed a hydrocele testis. The condition could be treated with a routine surgical operation that would release the blocked fluid in the scrotal sac, but his family could not afford the operation. In January 1910, a doctor volunteered to do the surgery at no cost.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: After his successful surgery, Ramanujan searched for a job. He stayed at a friend's house while he went from door to door around Madras looking for a clerical position. To make money, he tutored students at Presidency College who were preparing for their Fellow of Arts exam.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: In late 1910, Ramanujan was sick again. He feared for his health, and told his friend R. Radakrishna Iyer to "hand [his notebooks] over to Professor Singaravelu Mudaliar [the mathematics professor at Pachaiyappa's College] or to the British professor Edward B. Ross, of the Madras Christian College." After Ramanujan recovered and retrieved his notebooks from Iyer, he took a train from Kumbakonam to Villupuram, a city under French control. In 1912, Ramanujan moved with his wife and mother to a house in Saiva Muthaiah Mudali street, George Town, Madras, where they lived for a few months. In May 1913, upon securing a research position at Madras University, Ramanujan moved with his family to Triplicane.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: In 1910, Ramanujan met deputy collector V. Ramaswamy Aiyer, who founded the Indian Mathematical Society. Wishing for a job at the revenue department where Aiyer worked, Ramanujan showed him his mathematics notebooks. As Aiyer later recalled:


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: I was struck by the extraordinary mathematical results contained in [the notebooks]. I had no mind to smother his genius by an appointment in the lowest rungs of the revenue department.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: Aiyer sent Ramanujan, with letters of introduction, to his mathematician friends in Madras. Some of them looked at his work and gave him letters of introduction to R. Ramachandra Rao, the district collector for Nellore and the secretary of the Indian Mathematical Society. Rao was impressed by Ramanujan's research but doubted that it was his own work. Ramanujan mentioned a correspondence he had with Professor Saldhana, a notable Bombay mathematician, in which Saldhana expressed a lack of understanding of his work but concluded that he was not a fraud. Ramanujan's friend C. V. Rajagopalachari tried to quell Rao's doubts about Ramanujan's academic integrity. Rao agreed to give him another chance, and listened as Ramanujan discussed elliptic integrals, hypergeometric series, and his theory of divergent series, which Rao said ultimately convinced him of Ramanujan's brilliance. When Rao asked him what he wanted, Ramanujan replied that he needed work and financial support. Rao consented and sent him to Madras. He continued his research with Rao's financial aid. With Aiyer's help, Ramanujan had his work published in the "Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: He waited for a solution to be offered in three issues, over six months, but failed to receive any. At the end, Ramanujan supplied an incomplete solution to the problem himself. On page 105 of his first notebook, he formulated an equation that could be used to solve the infinitely nested radicals problem.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: Using this equation, the answer to the question posed in the "Journal" was simply 3, obtained by setting , , and . Ramanujan wrote his first formal paper for the "Journal" on the properties of Bernoulli numbers. One property he discovered was that the denominators of the fractions of Bernoulli numbers are always divisible by six. He also devised a method of calculating based on previous Bernoulli numbers. One of these methods follows:


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: In his 17-page paper "Some Properties of Bernoulli's Numbers" (1911), Ramanujan gave three proofs, two corollaries and three conjectures. His writing initially had many flaws. As "Journal" editor M. T. Narayana Iyengar noted:


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: Mr. Ramanujan's methods were so terse and novel and his presentation so lacking in clearness and precision, that the ordinary [mathematical reader], unaccustomed to such intellectual gymnastics, could hardly follow him.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: Ramanujan later wrote another paper and also continued to provide problems in the "Journal". In early 1912, he got a temporary job in the Madras Accountant General's office, with a monthly salary of 20 rupees. He lasted only a few weeks. Toward the end of that assignment, he applied for a position under the Chief Accountant of the Madras Port Trust.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: I understand there is a clerkship vacant in your office, and I beg to apply for the same. I have passed the Matriculation Examination and studied up to the F.A. but was prevented from pursuing my studies further owing to several untoward circumstances. I have, however, been devoting all my time to Mathematics and developing the subject. I can say I am quite confident I can do justice to my work if I am appointed to the post. I therefore beg to request that you will be good enough to confer the appointment on me.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: Attached to his application was a recommendation from E. W. Middlemast, a mathematics professor at the Presidency College, who wrote that Ramanujan was "a young man of quite exceptional capacity in Mathematics". Three weeks after he applied, on 1 March, Ramanujan learned that he had been accepted as a Class III, Grade IV accounting clerk, making 30 rupees per month. At his office, Ramanujan easily and quickly completed the work he was given and spent his spare time doing mathematical research. Ramanujan's boss, Sir Francis Spring, and S. Narayana Iyer, a colleague who was also treasurer of the Indian Mathematical Society, encouraged Ramanujan in his mathematical pursuits.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: In the spring of 1913, Narayana Iyer, Ramachandra Rao and E. W. Middlemast tried to present Ramanujan's work to British mathematicians. M. J. M. Hill of University College London commented that Ramanujan's papers were riddled with holes. He said that although Ramanujan had "a taste for mathematics, and some ability", he lacked the necessary educational background and foundation to be accepted by mathematicians. Although Hill did not offer to take Ramanujan on as a student, he gave thorough and serious professional advice on his work. With the help of friends, Ramanujan drafted letters to leading mathematicians at Cambridge University.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: The first two professors, H. F. Baker and E. W. Hobson, returned Ramanujan's papers without comment. On 16 January 1913, Ramanujan wrote to G. H. Hardy. Coming from an unknown mathematician, the nine pages of mathematics made Hardy initially view Ramanujan's manuscripts as a possible fraud. Hardy recognised some of Ramanujan's formulae but others "seemed scarcely possible to believe". One of the theorems Hardy found amazing was on the bottom of page three (valid for ):


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: The first result had already been determined by G. Bauer in 1859. The second was new to Hardy, and was derived from a class of functions called hypergeometric series, which had first been researched by Euler and Gauss. Hardy found these results "much more intriguing" than Gauss's work on integrals. After seeing Ramanujan's theorems on continued fractions on the last page of the manuscripts, Hardy said the theorems "defeated me completely; I had never seen anything in the least like them before", and that they "must be true, because, if they were not true, no one would have the imagination to invent them". Hardy asked a colleague, J. E. Littlewood, to take a look at the papers. Littlewood was amazed by Ramanujan's genius. After discussing the papers with Littlewood, Hardy concluded that the letters were "certainly the most remarkable I have received" and that Ramanujan was "a mathematician of the highest quality, a man of altogether exceptional originality and power". One colleague, E. H. Neville, later remarked that "not one [theorem] could have been set in the most advanced mathematical examination in the world".


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: On 8 February 1913, Hardy wrote Ramanujan a letter expressing interest in his work, adding that it was "essential that I should see proofs of some of your assertions". Before his letter arrived in Madras during the third week of February, Hardy contacted the Indian Office to plan for Ramanujan's trip to Cambridge. Secretary Arthur Davies of the Advisory Committee for Indian Students met with Ramanujan to discuss the overseas trip. In accordance with his Brahmin upbringing, Ramanujan refused to leave his country to "go to a foreign land". Meanwhile, he sent Hardy a letter packed with theorems, writing, "I have found a friend in you who views my labour sympathetically."


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: To supplement Hardy's endorsement, Gilbert Walker, a former mathematical lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge, looked at Ramanujan's work and expressed amazement, urging the young man to spend time at Cambridge. As a result of Walker's endorsement, B. Hanumantha Rao, a mathematics professor at an engineering college, invited Ramanujan's colleague Narayana Iyer to a meeting of the Board of Studies in Mathematics to discuss "what we can do for S. Ramanujan". The board agreed to grant Ramanujan a monthly research scholarship of 75 rupees for the next two years at the University of Madras.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: While he was engaged as a research student, Ramanujan continued to submit papers to the "Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society." In one instance, Iyer submitted some of Ramanujan's theorems on summation of series to the journal, adding, "The following theorem is due to S. Ramanujan, the mathematics student of Madras University." Later in November, British Professor Edward B. Ross of Madras Christian College, whom Ramanujan had met a few years before, stormed into his class one day with his eyes glowing, asking his students, "Does Ramanujan know Polish?" The reason was that in one paper, Ramanujan had anticipated the work of a Polish mathematician whose paper had just arrived in the day's mail. In his quarterly papers, Ramanujan drew up theorems to make definite integrals more easily solvable. Working off Giuliano Frullani's 1821 integral theorem, Ramanujan formulated generalisations that could be made to evaluate formerly unyielding integrals.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: Hardy's correspondence with Ramanujan soured after Ramanujan refused to come to England. Hardy enlisted a colleague lecturing in Madras, E. H. Neville, to mentor and bring Ramanujan to England. Neville asked Ramanujan why he would not go to Cambridge. Ramanujan apparently had now accepted the proposal; Neville said, "Ramanujan needed no converting" and "his parents' opposition had been withdrawn". Apparently, Ramanujan's mother had a vivid dream in which the family goddess, the deity of Namagiri, commanded her "to stand no longer between her son and the fulfilment of his life's purpose". On 17 March 1914, Ramanujan traveled to England by ship, leaving his wife to stay with his parents in India.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: Ramanujan departed from Madras aboard the S.S. "Nevasa" on 17 March 1914. When he disembarked in London on 14 April, Neville was waiting for him with a car. Four days later, Neville took him to his house on Chesterton Road in Cambridge. Ramanujan immediately began his work with Littlewood and Hardy. After six weeks, Ramanujan moved out of Neville's house and took up residence on Whewell's Court, a five-minute walk from Hardy's room.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: Hardy and Littlewood began to look at Ramanujan's notebooks. Hardy had already received 120 theorems from Ramanujan in the first two letters, but there were many more results and theorems in the notebooks. Hardy saw that some were wrong, others had already been discovered, and the rest were new breakthroughs. Ramanujan left a deep impression on Hardy and Littlewood. Littlewood commented, "I can believe that he's at least a Jacobi", while Hardy said he "can compare him only with Euler or Jacobi."


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: Ramanujan spent nearly five years in Cambridge collaborating with Hardy and Littlewood, and published part of his findings there. Hardy and Ramanujan had highly contrasting personalities. Their collaboration was a clash of different cultures, beliefs, and working styles. In the previous few decades, the foundations of mathematics had come into question and the need for mathematically rigorous proofs recognised. Hardy was an atheist and an apostle of proof and mathematical rigour, whereas Ramanujan was a deeply religious man who relied very strongly on his intuition and insights. Hardy tried his best to fill the gaps in Ramanujan's education and to mentor him in the need for formal proofs to support his results, without hindering his inspiration—a conflict that neither found easy.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: Ramanujan was awarded a "Bachelor of Arts by Research" degree (the predecessor of the PhD degree) in March 1916 for his work on highly composite numbers, sections of the first part of which had been published the preceding year in the "Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society." The paper was more than 50 pages long and proved various properties of such numbers. Hardy disliked this topic area but remarked that though it engaged with what he called the 'backwater of mathematics', in it Ramanujan displayed 'extraordinary mastery over the algebra of inequalities'.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: On 6 December 1917, Ramanujan was elected to the London Mathematical Society. On 2 May 1918, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, the second Indian admitted, after Ardaseer Cursetjee in 1841. At age 31, Ramanujan was one of the youngest Fellows in the Royal Society's history. He was elected "for his investigation in elliptic functions and the Theory of Numbers." On 13 October 1918, he was the first Indian to be elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: Ramanujan had numerous health problems throughout his life. His health worsened in England; possibly he was also less resilient due to the difficulty of keeping to the strict dietary requirements of his religion there and because of wartime rationing in 1914–18. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis and a severe vitamin deficiency, and confined to a sanatorium. In 1919, he returned to Kumbakonam, Madras Presidency, and in 1920 he died at the age of 32. After his death, his brother Tirunarayanan compiled Ramanujan's remaining handwritten notes, consisting of formulae on singular moduli, hypergeometric series and continued fractions.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: Ramanujan's widow, Smt. Janaki Ammal, moved to Bombay. In 1931, she returned to Madras and settled in Triplicane, where she supported herself on a pension from Madras University and income from tailoring. In 1950, she adopted a son, W. Narayanan, who eventually became an officer of the State Bank of India and raised a family. In her later years, she was granted a lifetime pension from Ramanujan's former employer, the Madras Port Trust, and pensions from, among others, the Indian National Science Academy and the state governments of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal. She continued to cherish Ramanujan's memory, and was active in efforts to increase his public recognition; prominent mathematicians, including George Andrews, Bruce C. Berndt and Béla Bollobás made it a point to visit her while in India. She died at her Triplicane residence in 1994.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: A 1994 analysis of Ramanujan's medical records and symptoms by Dr. D. A. B. Young concluded that his medical symptoms—including his past relapses, fevers, and hepatic conditions—were much closer to those resulting from hepatic amoebiasis, an illness then widespread in Madras, than tuberculosis. He had two episodes of dysentery before he left India. When not properly treated, amoebic dysentery can lie dormant for years and lead to hepatic amoebiasis, whose diagnosis was not then well established. At the time, if properly diagnosed, amoebiasis was a treatable and often curable disease; British soldiers who contracted it during the First World War were being successfully cured of amoebiasis around the time Ramanujan left England.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: Ramanujan has been described as a person of a somewhat shy and quiet disposition, a dignified man with pleasant manners. He lived a simple life at Cambridge. Ramanujan's first Indian biographers describe him as a rigorously orthodox Hindu. He credited his acumen to his family goddess, Namagiri Thayar (Goddess Mahalakshmi) of Namakkal. He looked to her for inspiration in his work and said he dreamed of blood drops that symbolised her consort, Narasimha. Later he had visions of scrolls of complex mathematical content unfolding before his eyes. He often said, "An equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God."


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: Hardy cites Ramanujan as remarking that all religions seemed equally true to him. Hardy further argued that Ramanujan's religious belief had been romanticised by Westerners and overstated—in reference to his belief, not practice—by Indian biographers. At the same time, he remarked on Ramanujan's strict vegetarianism.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: Similarly, in an interview with Frontline, Berndt said, "Many people falsely promulgate mystical powers to Ramanujan's mathematical thinking. It is not true. He has meticulously recorded every result in his three notebooks," further speculating that Ramanujan worked out intermediate results on slate that he could not afford the paper to record more permanently.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: In mathematics, there is a distinction between insight and formulating or working through a proof. Ramanujan proposed an abundance of formulae that could be investigated later in depth. G. H. Hardy said that Ramanujan's discoveries are unusually rich and that there is often more to them than initially meets the eye. As a byproduct of his work, new directions of research were opened up. Examples of the most intriguing of these formulae include infinite series for , one of which is given below:


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: This result is based on the negative fundamental discriminant with class number . Further, and , which is related to the fact that


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: Ramanujan's series for converges extraordinarily rapidly and forms the basis of some of the fastest algorithms currently used to calculate . Truncating the sum to the first term also gives the approximation for , which is correct to six decimal places; truncating it to the first two terms gives a value correct to 14 decimal places. See also the more general Ramanujan–Sato series.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: One of Ramanujan's remarkable capabilities was the rapid solution of problems, illustrated by the following anecdote about an incident in which P. C. Mahalanobis posed a problem:


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: for all such that formula_9 and formula_10, where is the gamma function, and related to a special value of the Dedekind eta function. Expanding into series of powers and equating coefficients of , , and gives some deep identities for the hyperbolic secant.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: In 1918, Hardy and Ramanujan studied the partition function extensively. They gave a non-convergent asymptotic series that permits exact computation of the number of partitions of an integer. In 1937, Hans Rademacher refined their formula to find an exact convergent series solution to this problem. Ramanujan and Hardy's work in this area gave rise to a powerful new method for finding asymptotic formulae called the circle method.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: In the last year of his life, Ramanujan discovered mock theta functions. For many years, these functions were a mystery, but they are now known to be the holomorphic parts of harmonic weak Maass forms.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: Although there are numerous statements that could have borne the name "Ramanujan conjecture," one was highly influential on later work. In particular, the connection of this conjecture with conjectures of André Weil in algebraic geometry opened up new areas of research. That Ramanujan conjecture is an assertion on the size of the tau-function, which has as generating function the discriminant modular form Δ("q"), a typical cusp form in the theory of modular forms. It was finally proven in 1973, as a consequence of Pierre Deligne's proof of the Weil conjectures. The reduction step involved is complicated. Deligne won a Fields Medal in 1978 for that work.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: In his paper "On certain arithmetical functions", Ramanujan defined the so-called delta-function, whose coefficients are called (the Ramanujan tau function). He proved many congruences for these numbers, such as for primes . This congruence (and others like it that Ramanujan proved) inspired Jean-Pierre Serre (1954 Fields Medalist) to conjecture that there is a theory of Galois representations that "explains" these congruences and more generally all modular forms. is the first example of a modular form to be studied in this way. Deligne (in his Fields Medal-winning work) proved Serre's conjecture. The proof of Fermat's Last Theorem proceeds by first reinterpreting elliptic curves and modular forms in terms of these Galois representations. Without this theory, there would be no proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: While still in Madras, Ramanujan recorded the bulk of his results in four notebooks of looseleaf paper. They were mostly written up without any derivations. This is probably the origin of the misapprehension that Ramanujan was unable to prove his results and simply thought up the final result directly. Mathematician Bruce C. Berndt, in his review of these notebooks and Ramanujan's work, says that Ramanujan most certainly was able to prove most of his results, but chose not to record the proofs in his notes.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: This may have been for any number of reasons. Since paper was very expensive, Ramanujan did most of his work and perhaps his proofs on slate, after which he transferred the final results to paper. At the time, slates were commonly used by mathematics students in the Madras Presidency. He was also quite likely to have been influenced by the style of G. S. Carr's book, which stated results without proofs. It is also possible that Ramanujan considered his work to be for his personal interest alone and therefore recorded only the results.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: The first notebook has 351 pages with 16 somewhat organised chapters and some unorganised material. The second has 256 pages in 21 chapters and 100 unorganised pages, and the third 33 unorganised pages. The results in his notebooks inspired numerous papers by later mathematicians trying to prove what he had found. Hardy himself wrote papers exploring material from Ramanujan's work, as did G. N. Watson, B. M. Wilson, and Bruce Berndt.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: In 1976, George Andrews rediscovered a fourth notebook with 87 unorganised pages, the so-called "lost notebook".


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: The number 1729 is known as the Hardy–Ramanujan number after a famous visit by Hardy to see Ramanujan at a hospital. In Hardy's words:


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: I remember once going to see him when he was ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavorable omen. "No", he replied, "it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways."


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: Immediately before this anecdote, Hardy quoted Littlewood as saying, "Every positive integer was one of [Ramanujan's] personal friends."


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: In his obituary of Ramanujan, written for "Nature" in 1920, Hardy observed that Ramanujan's work primarily involved fields less known even among other pure mathematicians, concluding:


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: When asked about the methods Ramanujan employed to arrive at his solutions, Hardy said they were "arrived at by a process of mingled argument, intuition, and induction, of which he was entirely unable to give any coherent account." He also said that he had "never met his equal, and can compare him only with Euler or Jacobi".


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: K. Srinivasa Rao has said, "As for his place in the world of Mathematics, we quote Bruce C. Berndt: 'Paul Erdős has passed on to us Hardy's personal ratings of mathematicians. Suppose that we rate mathematicians on the basis of pure talent on a scale from 0 to 100. Hardy gave himself a score of 25, J. E. Littlewood 30, David Hilbert 80 and Ramanujan 100. During a May 2011 lecture at IIT Madras, Berndt said that over the last 40 years, as nearly all of Ramanujan's conjectures had been proven, there had been greater appreciation of Ramanujan's work and brilliance, and that Ramanujan's work was now pervading many areas of modern mathematics and physics.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: The year after his death, "Nature" listed Ramanujan among other distinguished scientists and mathematicians on a "Calendar of Scientific Pioneers" who had achieved eminence. Ramanujan's home state of Tamil Nadu celebrates 22 December (Ramanujan's birthday) as 'State IT Day'. Stamps picturing Ramanujan were issued by the government of India in 1962, 2011, 2012 and 2016.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: Since Ramanujan's centennial year, his birthday, 22 December, has been annually celebrated as Ramanujan Day by the Government Arts College, Kumbakonam, where he studied, and at the IIT Madras in Chennai. The International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) has created a prize in Ramanujan's name for young mathematicians from developing countries in cooperation with the International Mathematical Union, which nominates members of the prize committee. SASTRA University, a private university based in Tamil Nadu, has instituted the SASTRA Ramanujan Prize of US$10,000 to be given annually to a mathematician not exceeding age 32 for outstanding contributions in an area of mathematics influenced by Ramanujan.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: Based on the recommendations of a committee appointed by the University Grants Commission (UGC), Government of India, the Srinivasa Ramanujan Centre, established by SASTRA, has been declared an off-campus centre under the ambit of SASTRA University. House of Ramanujan Mathematics, a museum of Ramanujan's life and work, is also on this campus. SASTRA purchased and renovated the house where Ramanujan lived at Kumabakonam.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: In 2011, on the 125th anniversary of his birth, the Indian government declared that 22 December will be celebrated every year as "National Mathematics Day". Then Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also declared that 2012 would be celebrated as National Mathematics Year.


title: Srinivasa Ramanujan

text: Ramanujan IT City is an information technology (IT) special economic zone (SEZ) in Chennai that was built in 2011. Situated next to the Tidel Park, it includes with two zones, with a total area of , including of office space.


title: Kerala

text: Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South Canara, and Thiruvithamkoor. Spread over , Kerala is the 21st largest Indian state by area. It is bordered by Karnataka to the north and northeast, Tamil Nadu to the east and south, and the Lakshadweep Sea to the west. With 33 million inhabitants as per the 2011 census, Kerala is the 13th-largest Indian state by population. It is divided into 14 districts with the capital being Thiruvananthapuram. Malayalam is the most widely spoken language and is also the official language of the state.


title: Kerala

text: The Chera dynasty was the first prominent kingdom based in Kerala. The Ay kingdom in the deep south and the Ezhimala kingdom in the north formed the other kingdoms in the early years of the Common Era (CE). The region had been a prominent spice exporter since 3000 BCE. The region's prominence in trade was noted in the works of Pliny as well as the Periplus around . In the 15th century, the spice trade attracted Portuguese traders to Kerala, and paved the way for European colonisation of India. At the time of Indian independence movement in the early 20th century, there were two major princely states in Kerala: Thiruvithamkoor and Cochin. They united to form the state of Thiru-Kochi in 1949. The Malabar region, in the northern part of Kerala, had been a part of the Madras province of British India, which later became a part of the Madras State post-independence. After the States Reorganisation Act, 1956, the modern-day state of Kerala was formed by merging the Malabar district of Madras State (excluding Gudalur taluk of Nilgiris district, Lakshadweep Islands, Topslip, the Attappadi Forest east of Anakatti), the taluk of Kasaragod (now Kasaragod District) in South Canara, and the erstwhile state of Thiru-Kochi (excluding four southern taluks of Kanyakumari district, and Shenkottai taluks).


title: Kerala

text: Kerala has the lowest positive population growth rate in India, 3.44%; the highest Human Development Index (HDI), 0.784 in 2018 (0.712 in 2015); the highest literacy rate, 96.2% in the 2018 literacy survey conducted by the National Statistical Office, India; the highest life expectancy, 77.3 years; and the highest sex ratio, 1,084 women per 1,000 men. Kerala is the second-least impoverished state in India according to the Annual Report of Reserve Bank of India published in 2013. Kerala is the second-most urbanised major state in the country with 47.7% urban population according to the 2011 Census of India. The state topped in the country to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals according to the annual report of NITI Aayog published in 2019. The state has the highest media exposure in India with newspapers publishing in nine languages, mainly Malayalam and sometimes English. Hinduism is practised by more than half of the population, followed by Islam and Christianity.


title: Kerala

text: The economy of Kerala is the 8th-largest in India with in gross state domestic product (GSDP) and a per capita net state domestic product of . The tertiary sector contributes around 65% to state's GSVA, while the primary sector contributes only 8%. The state has witnessed significant emigration, especially to the Arab states of the Persian Gulf during the Gulf Boom of the 1970s and early 1980s, and its economy depends significantly on remittances from a large Malayali expatriate community. The production of pepper and natural rubber contributes significantly to the total national output. In the agricultural sector, coconut, tea, coffee, cashew and spices are important. The state is situated between Arabian Sea to the west and Western Ghats mountain ranges to the east. The state's coastline extends for , and around 1.1 million people in the state are dependent on the fishery industry which contributes 3% to the state's income. Kerala is one of the prominent tourist destinations of India, with coconut-lined sandy beaches, backwaters, hill stations, Ayurvedic tourism and tropical greenery as its major attractions.


title: Kerala

text: The word "Kerala" is first recorded as "Keralaputo" ('son of Chera [s]') in a 3rd-century-BCE rock inscription left by the Maurya emperor Ashoka (274–237 BCE), one of his edicts pertaining to welfare. At that time, one of three states in the region was called in Classical Tamil: and are variants of the same word. The word refers to the oldest known dynasty of Kerala kings and is derived from the Proto-Tamil-Malayalam word for 'lake'. may stem from the Classical Tamil 'declivity of a hill or a mountain slope' or 'land of the Cheras'.


title: Kerala

text: One folk etymology derives "Kerala" from the Malayalam word 'coconut tree' and 'land'; thus, 'land of coconuts', which is a nickname for the state used by locals due to the abundance of coconut trees.


title: Kerala

text: The earliest Sanskrit text to mention Kerala as "Cherapadha" is the late Vedic text Aitareya Aranyaka. Kerala is also mentioned in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the two Hindu epics. The "Skanda Purana" mentions the ecclesiastical office of the Thachudaya Kaimal who is referred to as , synonymous with the deity of the Koodalmanikyam temple. The Greco-Roman trade map "Periplus Maris Erythraei" refers to Kerala as "Celobotra".


title: Kerala

text: Kerala was alternatively called "Malabar" in the foreign trade circles. Earlier, the term "Malabar" had also been used to denote Tulu Nadu and Kanyakumari which lie contiguous to Kerala on the southwestern coast of India, in addition to the modern state of Kerala. The people of Malabar were known as "Malabars". Until the arrival of the East India Company, the term "Malabar" was used as a general name for Kerala, along with the term "Kerala". From the time of Cosmas Indicopleustes (6th century CE) itself, the Arab sailors used to call Kerala as "Male". The first element of the name, however, is attested already in the "Topography" written by Cosmas Indicopleustes. This mentions a pepper emporium called "Male", which clearly gave its name to Malabar ('the country of Male'). The name "Male" is thought to come from the Malayalam word "Mala" ('hill'). Al-Biruni () is the first known writer to call this country "Malabar". Authors such as Ibn Khordadbeh and Al-Baladhuri mention Malabar ports in their works. The Arab writers had called this place "Malibar", "Manibar", "Mulibar", and "Munibar". "Malabar" is reminiscent of the word "Malanad" which means "the land of hills". According to William Logan, the word "Malabar" comes from a combination of the Malayalam word "Mala" (hill) and the Persian/Arabic word "Barr" (country/continent).


title: Kerala

text: According to the Sangam classic "Purananuru", the Chera king Senkuttuvan conquered the lands between Kanyakumari and the Himalayas. Lacking worthy enemies, he besieged the sea by throwing his spear into it. According to the 17th-century Hindu mythology work "Keralolpathi", the lands of Kerala were recovered from the sea by the axe-wielding warrior sage Parasurama, the sixth avatar of Vishnu (hence, Kerala is also called "Parasurama Kshetram" 'The Land of Parasurama' in Hindu mythology). Parasurama threw his axe across the sea, and the water receded as far as it reached. According to legend, this new area of land extended from Gokarna to Kanyakumari. The land which rose from sea was filled with salt and unsuitable for habitation; so Parasurama invoked the Snake King Vasuki, who spat holy poison and converted the soil into fertile lush green land. Out of respect, Vasuki and all snakes were appointed as protectors and guardians of the land. P. T. Srinivasa Iyengar theorised, that Senguttuvan may have been inspired by the Parasurama legend, which was brought by early Aryan settlers.


title: Kerala

text: Another much earlier Puranic character associated with Kerala is Mahabali, an Asura and a prototypical just king, who ruled the earth from Kerala. He won the war against the Devas, driving them into exile. The Devas pleaded before Lord "Vishnu", who took his fifth incarnation as "Vamana" and pushed Mahabali down to netherworld to placate the Devas. There is a belief that, once a year during the Onam festival, Mahabali returns to Kerala. The Matsya Purana, among the oldest of the 18 Puranas, uses the Malaya Mountains of Kerala (and Tamil Nadu) as the setting for the story of Matsya, the first incarnation of Vishnu, and Manu, the first man and the king of the region.


title: Kerala

text: Ophir, a port or region mentioned in the Bible, famous for its wealth, is often identified with some coastal areas of Kerala. According to legend, the King Solomon received a cargo from Ophir every three years (1 Kings 10:22) which consisted of gold, silver, sandalwood, pearls, ivory, apes, and peacocks. "A Dictionary of the Bible" by Sir William Smith, published in 1863, notes the Hebrew word for parrot "Thukki", derived from the Classical Tamil for peacock "Thogkai" and Cingalese "Tokei", joins other Classical Tamil words for ivory, cotton-cloth and apes preserved in the Hebrew Bible. This theory of Ophir's location in Tamilakam is further supported by other historians. The most likely location on the coast of Kerala conjectured to be Ophir is Poovar in Thiruvananthapuram District (though some Indian scholars also suggest Beypore as possible location). The Books of Kings and Chronicles tell of a joint expedition to Ophir by King Solomon and the Tyrian king Hiram I from Ezion-Geber, a port on the Red Sea, that brought back large amounts of gold, precious stones and 'algum wood' and of a later failed expedition by king Jehoshaphat of Judah. The famous 'gold of Ophir' is referenced in several other books of the Hebrew Bible.


title: Kerala

text: The legend of Cheraman Perumals is the medieval tradition associated with the "Cheraman Perumals" (literally the Chera kings) of Kerala. The validity of the legend as a source of history once generated much debate among South Indian historians. The legend was used by Kerala chiefdoms for the legitimation of their rule (most of the major chiefly houses in medieval Kerala traced its origin back to the legendary allocation by the Perumal). According to the legend, "Rayar", the overlord of the Cheraman Perumal in a country east of the Ghats, invaded Kerala during the rule of the last Perumal. To drive back the invading forces the Perumal summoned the militia of his chieftains (like "Udaya Varman Kolathiri", "Manichchan", and "Vikkiran" of Eranad). The "Cheraman Perumal" was assured by the "Eradis" (chief of Eranad) that they would take a fort established by the "Rayar". The battle lasted for three days and the "Rayar" eventually evacuated his fort (and it was seized by the Perumal's troops). Then the last "Cheraman Perumal" divided Kerala or Chera kingdom among his chieftains and disappeared mysteriously. The Kerala people never more heard any tidings of him. The "Eradis" of Nediyiruppu, who later came to be known as the Zamorins of Kozhikode, who were left out in cold during allocation of the land, was granted the "Cheraman Perumal" sword (with the permission to "die, and kill, and seize").


title: Kerala

text: According to the Cheraman Juma Mosque and some other narratives, "Once a "Cheraman Perumal" probably named Ravi Varma was walking with his queen in the palace, when he witnessed the splitting of the moon. Shocked by this, he asked his astronomers to note down the exact time of the splitting. Then, when some Arab merchants visited his palace, he asked them about this incident. Their answers led the King to Mecca, where he met Islamic prophet Muhammad and converted to Islam. It is assumed that the first recorded version of this legend is an Arabic manuscript of anonymous authorship known as "Qissat Shakarwati Farmad". The 16th century Arabic work "Tuhfat Ul Mujahideen" authored by Zainuddin Makhdoom II of Ponnani, as well as the medieval Malayalam work "Keralolpathi", also mention about the departure of last "Cheraman Perumal" of Kerala into Mecca.


title: Kerala

text: However, S. N. Sadasivan contends in "A Social History of India" that Kalimanja, the king of the Maldives, was the one who converted to Islam. The story of Tajuddeen in the Cochin Gazetteer may have originated because Mali, as it was known to sailors at the time, was mistaken for Malabar (Kerala).


title: Kerala

text: A substantial portion of Kerala including the western coastal lowlands and the plains of the midland may have been under the sea in ancient times. Marine fossils have been found in an area near Changanassery, thus supporting the hypothesis. Pre-historical archaeological findings include dolmens of the Neolithic era in the Marayur area of the Idukki district, which lie on the eastern highland made by Western Ghats. They are locally known as "muniyara", derived from "muni" (hermit or sage) and "ara" (dolmen). Rock engravings in the Edakkal Caves, in Wayanad date back to the Neolithic era around 6000 BCE. Archaeological studies have identified Mesolithic, Neolithic and Megalithic sites in Kerala. The studies point to the development of ancient Kerala society and its culture beginning from the Paleolithic Age, through the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Megalithic Ages. Foreign cultural contacts have assisted this cultural formation; historians suggest a possible relationship with Indus Valley civilization during the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age.


title: Kerala

text: Kerala has been a major spice exporter since 3000 BCE, according to Sumerian records and it is still referred to as the "Garden of Spices" or as the "Spice Garden of India". Kerala's spices attracted ancient Arabs, Babylonians, Assyrians and Egyptians to the Malabar Coast in the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE. Phoenicians established trade with Kerala during this period. Arabs and Phoenicians were the first to enter Malabar Coast to trade Spices. The Arabs on the coasts of Yemen, Oman, and the Persian Gulf, must have made the first long voyage to Kerala and other eastern countries. They must have brought the Cinnamon of Kerala to the Middle East. The Greek historian Herodotus (5th century BCE) records that in his time the cinnamon spice industry was monopolized by the Egyptians and the Phoenicians.


title: Kerala

text: The "Land of Keralaputra" was one of the four independent kingdoms in southern India during Ashoka's time, the others being Chola, Pandya, and Satiyaputra. Scholars hold that Keralaputra is an alternate name of the Cheras, the first dominant dynasty who ruled Kerala, and had its capital at Karur. These territories once shared a common language and culture, within an area known as Tamilakam. The region around Coimbatore was ruled by the Cheras during Sangam period between 1st and the 4th centuries CE and it served as the eastern entrance to the Palakkad Gap, the principal trade route between the Malabar Coast and Tamil Nadu. Along with the Ay kingdom in the south and the Ezhimala kingdom in the north, the Cheras formed the ruling kingdoms of Kerala in the early years of the Common Era (CE). It is noted in Sangam literature that the Chera king Uthiyan Cheralathan ruled most of modern Kerala from his capital in Kuttanad, and controlled the port of Muziris, but its southern tip was in the kingdom of Pandyas, which had a trading port sometimes identified in ancient Western sources as "Nelcynda" (or "Neacyndi") in Quilon. "Tyndis" was a major center of trade, next only to Muziris, between the Cheras and the Roman Empire. The lesser known Ays and Mushikas kingdoms lay to the south and north of the Chera regions, respectively. Pliny the Elder (1st century CE) states that the port of "Tyndis" was located at the northwestern border of "Keprobotos" (Chera dynasty). The North Malabar region, which lies north of the port at "Tyndis", was ruled by the kingdom of Ezhimala during Sangam period. The port at "Tyndis" which was on the northern side of "Muziris", as mentioned in Greco-Roman writings, was somewhere around Kozhikode. Its exact location is a matter of dispute. The suggested locations are Ponnani, Tanur, Beypore-Chaliyam-Kadalundi-Vallikkunnu, and Koyilandy.


title: Kerala

text: According to the "Periplus of the Erythraean Sea", a region known as "Limyrike" began at "Naura" and "Tyndis". However the Ptolemy mentions only "Tyndis" as the "Limyrike"'s starting point. The region probably ended at Kanyakumari; it thus roughly corresponds to the present-day Malabar Coast. The value of Rome's annual trade with the region was estimated at 50,000,000 sesterces. According to Pliny the Elder, goods from India were sold in the Empire at 100 times their original purchase price. Pliny the Elder mentioned that "Limyrike" was prone to raids by pirates. The Cosmas Indicopleustes mentioned that the "Limyrike" was a source of Malabar peppers. In the last centuries BCE the coast became important to the Greeks and Romans for its spices, especially Malabar pepper. The Cheras had trading links with China, West Asia, Egypt, Greece, and the Roman Empire. In foreign-trade circles the region was known as "Male" or "Malabar". Muziris, Tyndis, Naura, Nelcynda, and Barace, were among the principal ports at that time. Contemporary Sangam literature describes Roman ships coming to Muziris in Kerala, laden with gold to exchange for Malabar pepper. One of the earliest western traders to use the monsoon winds to reach Kerala was Eudoxus of Cyzicus, around 118 or 166 BCE, under the patronage of Ptolemy VIII, king of the Hellenistic Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt. Roman establishments in the port cities of the region, such as a temple of "Augustus" and barracks for garrisoned Roman soldiers, are marked in the Tabula Peutingeriana, the only surviving map of the Roman "cursus publicus".


title: Kerala

text: Merchants from West Asia and Southern Europe established coastal posts and settlements in Kerala. The Israeli (Jewish) connection with Kerala started in 573 BCE. Arabs also had trade links with Kerala, starting before the 4th century BCE, as Herodotus (484–413 BCE) noted that goods brought by Arabs from Kerala were sold to the Israelis [Hebrew Jews] at Eden. In the 4th century, the Knanaya or Southist Christians also migrated from Persia and lived alongside the early Syriac Christian community known as the St. Thomas Christians who trace their origins to the evangelistic activity of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century. "Mappila" was an honorific title that had been assigned to respected visitors from abroad; Israelite (Jewish), Syrian Christian, and Muslim immigration account for later names of the respective communities: Juda Mappilas, Muslim Mappilas, and Nasrani Mappilas. The earliest Saint Thomas Christian Churches, Cheraman Jumu'ah Masjid (traditionally dated to "629 CE" by the Mappilas)—regarded as "the first mosque of India"—and Paradesi Synagogue (1568 CE)—the oldest active synagogue in the Commonwealth of Nations—were built in Kerala.


title: Kerala

text: A second Chera Kingdom (c. 800–1102), also known as Kulasekhara dynasty of Mahodayapuram (present-day Kodungallur), was established by Kulasekhara Varman, which ruled over a territory comprising the whole of modern Kerala and a smaller part of modern Tamil Nadu. During the early part of the Kulasekara period, the southern region from Nagercoil to Thiruvalla was ruled by Ay kings, who lost their power in the 10th century, making the region a part of the Kulasekara empire. Under Kulasekhara rule, Kerala witnessed a developing period of art, literature, trade and the Bhakti movement of Hinduism. A Keralite identity, distinct from the Tamils, became linguistically separate during this period around the seventh century. The origin of Malayalam calendar dates back to year 825 CE. For local administration, the empire was divided into provinces under the rule of Naduvazhis, with each province comprising a number of "Desams" under the control of chieftains, called as "Desavazhis". Mamankam festival, which was the largest native festival, was held at Tirunavaya near Kuttippuram, on the bank of river Bharathappuzha. Athavanad, the headquarters of "Azhvanchery Thamprakkal", who were also considered as the supreme religious chief of the Nambudiri Brahmins of Kerala, is also located near Tirunavaya.


title: Kerala

text: Sulaiman al-Tajir, a Persian merchant who visited Kerala during the reign of Sthanu Ravi Varma (9th century CE), records that there was extensive trade between Kerala and China at that time, based at the port of Kollam. A number of foreign accounts have mentioned about the presence of considerable Muslim population in the coastal towns. Arab writers such as Al-Masudi of Baghdad (896–956 CE), Muhammad al-Idrisi (1100–1165 CE), Abulfeda (1273–1331 CE), and Al-Dimashqi (1256–1327 CE) mention the Muslim communities in Kerala. Some historians assume that the Mappilas can be considered as the first native, settled Muslim community in South Asia. The known earliest mention about Muslims of Kerala is in the Quilon Syrian copper plates.


title: Kerala

text: The inhibitions, caused by a series of Chera-Chola wars in the 11th century, resulted in the decline of foreign trade in Kerala ports. In addition, Portuguese invasions in the 15th century caused two major religions, Buddhism and Jainism, to disappear from the land. It is known that the Menons in the Malabar region of Kerala were originally strong believers of Jainism. The social system became fractured with divisions on caste lines. Finally, the Kulasekhara dynasty was subjugated in 1102 by the combined attack of Later Pandyas and Later Cholas. However, in the 14th century, Ravi Varma Kulashekhara (1299–1314) of the southern Venad kingdom was able to establish a short-lived supremacy over southern India.