Book:G.H. Hardy/Ramanujan

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G.H. Hardy: Ramanujan

Published $\text {1940}$


Subject Matter


Contents




Representative Quote

[ Ramanujan ] could remember the idiosyncrasies of numbers in an almost uncanny way. It was Littlewood who said that every positive integer was one of Ramanujan's personal friends. I remember going to see him once when he was lying ill in Putney. I had ridden in a taxi-cab No. $1729$, and remarked that the number seemed to me a rather dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavpurable omen. 'No,' he reflected, 'it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.'