The story of Ramanujan's Magical No

 

Once Hardy took a cab to go to Ramanujan's place. When he got there, he told Ramanujan that the cab’s number, 1729, was “rather a dull one.” Ramanujan said, ‘No, Hardy it's a very interesting number. It is the smallest number expressible..as the sum of two positives’ cubes in two different ways. That is,

1729 = 1^3+12^3 = 9^3+10^3.

This number is now called the Ramanujan's Magic number, and also the smallest numbers that may be expressed because the sum of two cubes in n other ways are dubbed taxicab numbers.

Hardy came up with a scale of mathematical ability that went from 0 to 100. He put himself at 25. Hilbert, the German mathematician, was at 80. Ramanujan was 100.

When Ramanujan died in 1920 at the age of 32, he left behind 3 notebooks & a sheaf of papers (the “lost notebook”).

These notebooks contained thousands of results that are still inspiring mathematical work decades later.

HAPPY READING!!