Some
work,
found
string
of Ramnujan’s original and sometimes unconventional
have inspired vast amounts of further research and have
applications in fields as diverse as crystallography and
theory.
A common anecdote about Ramanujan during his last days
relates how Hardy arrived at Ramanujan's house in a cab
numbered 1729. He then mentioned to Ramanujan that the
number seemed to be very uninteresting. In reply, Ramanujan
is said to have remarked immediately that, in fact, the number
was an extremely interesting number mathematically, since it
was the smallest number representable as a sum of two cubes
in two different ways. This derivation is shown below:
1729 can be expressed as 13 + 123
or as 93 + 103
The number 1729 is now referred to as the Hardy-Ramanujan
number and numbers with is particular property are also
referred to as the "taxicab numbers". There are estimations that
Ramanujan speculated upon or provided proofs for over 3,000
such theorems, identities and equations.
Hardy, on the other, lived on till the age of 70. When asked in an
interview what his greatest contribution to mathematics was,
Hardy unhesitatingly replied that it was the discovery of
Ramanujan, and even called their collaboration "the one
romantic incident in my life". After Ramanujan died, Hardy
strongly urged that Ramanujan's notebooks be edited and
published.
Ramanujan’s extraordinary abilities and achievements can be
best summed up a remark made by Michio Kaku, a Japanese
American theoretical physicist, tenured professor and co-creator
of string field theory: “Srinivasa Ramanujan was the strangest
man in all of mathematics, probably in the entire history of
science. He has been compared to a bursting supernova,
illuminating the darkest, most profound corners of mathematics,
before being tragically struck down by tuberculosis at the age of
33.”
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