Srinivasa Ramanujan was born in Erode, India on December 22, 1887 to parents K. Srinivasa Iyengar, and mother Komalatammal. Growing up, his family did not have the best financial stability due to his father working as an accounting clerk and his mother as a singer at a temple. However, this did not stop Ramanujan from gaining so much knowledge. By the age of 10, Ramanujan was already ahead of his classmates and was attending high school. His passion for math began when he put his hands on a book called,   A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics . With no prior knowledge of advanced math, Ramanujan taught himself many mathematical concepts from this book and soon became a genius of the topic itself.  After high school, Ramanujan had received a scholarship to the Government Arts College in Kumbakonam. Because most of his attention revolved around math, he failed to complete his other subjects in school and lost the scholarship altogether. This led Ramanujan to obtain education elsewhere.