Attipate Krishnaswami Ramanujan also known as A. K. Ramanujan was an Indian poet and scholar of Indian literature who wrote in both English and Kannada. Ramanujan was a poet, scholar, a philologist, folklorist, translator, and playwright. His academic research ranged across five languages: English Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, and Sanskrit. He published works on both classical and modern variants of this literature and argued strongly for giving local, non-standard dialects their due. Though he wrote widely and in a number of genres, Ramanujan's poems are remembered as enigmatic works of startling originality, sophistication and moving artistry. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award posthumously in 1999 for his collection of poems, "The Collected Poems".

Attipat Krishnaswami Ramanujan was born in 1929 in Mysore in the Indian state of Karnataka. He was born to a Tamil family. He came to the U.S in 1959 where he remained until his death in July 13, 1993. He received his BA in English Literature and MA in literature from University of Mysore. Then he teaches at several universities in South India. After receiving a graduate diploma in Theoretical linguistics from Deccan University in Poona in 1958 he went to Indiana University where he got Ph.D. in linguistics in 1963. In 1962, he became professor at the University of Chicago. He played an instrumental role in shaping the South Asian Studies program. He has worked in the departments of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, Linguistics and with the Committee on Social Thought. In 1976 he was awarded with 'Padma Sri' and in 1983 he won the MacArthur Prize Fellowship.