G H Hardy on Ramanujan

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G H Hardy

Srinivasa Ramanujan

I came across this anecdote from G H Hardy, the great English Mathematician, from the book: "Pi in the Sky: Counting, Thinking and Being", a book on the history of Mathematics by John D Barrow, a Professor at Univ of Sussex:

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

Here is a full blown article on the number 1729 which came to be known as the Hardy-Ramanujan number on Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1729_(number)

God that's amazing!!

-Siddartha Pamulaparty
June 14, 2008

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