1729
Posted on Monday, March 12, 2007This is a true story for Dr Maroon.
Ramanujan was one of the greatest mathematical prodigies who ever lived. A former railway clerk, his genius was spotted and he was brought to England by a group of academics. It didn’t agree with him. He hated the food and the climate. He died young but his conjectures are still being studied and are the source of endless doctorates.
The great mathematician Hardy went to see Ramanujan when he was dying. Conversation was pained. Eventually, Hardy could take no more.
I say, Ramanujan, old bean, he said. I noticed the taxi licence number on the way here and I have to say, it was singularly uninteresting.
Ramanujan sat up in his bed.
What was the number, my dear Hardy?
Oh, I could make no sense of it. 1729, I believe. I could see nothing to interest me in it. A distinctly undistinguished number.
Oh no no no no no! said Ramanujan. That is a most interesting number. 1729 is the lowest number that can be expressed as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.
Answers on the back of a fifty-euro note, please.
Stumble it!
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March 13th, 2007
Positive cubes …
1729 = 1^3 + 12^3 = 9^3 + 10^3
March 13th, 2007
10×10x10 + 9×9x9
or
1×1x1 + 12×12x12
My favourite mathematical anecdote.
March 13th, 2007
Do you want our working too?
I tried to leave an enormous comment on another post here earlier but Time Warner had other ideas. 3 hours we were without internet access. 3! I’d only have been using it for about 15 minutes of that time, but still, the anxiety, the not knowing, the pacing, when will it come back? I expect this is a new modern condition or something.
Anyway.
March 13th, 2007
The great mathematician
I bet that title gets him the gurls.
March 13th, 2007
A clever shower of fuckers, ha? George, if you’re really the man in that picture, well, ah hae ma doots, as Knudsen might say. Speaking of whom. Knudsen: it gets him all the necrophiliac gurls.
Sam, that’s a modern-day tragedy. I hope it resolves itself soon.
March 13th, 2007
Well, Duh.
If I’d had my pencil and a bit o’ paper…
The really weird thing about it was, at that time there were only 600 taxis operating in the metropolis. Pick the bones out of that!
March 13th, 2007
Hey Maroon. It’s just a kind of a welcome back message. You pick the bones out of it if you want.
March 14th, 2007
Ramanujan’s yer man.
March 14th, 2007
Numbers of this form are now called Taxicab numbers.
Read for example D.W. Wilson’s brilliant “The Fifth Taxicab Number is 48988659276962496.” in the Journal of Integer Sequences.
All the gurls read that magazine.