Subject: [HM] Ramanujan (was: Indian astronomy and mathematics)
From: Antreas P. Hatzipolakis (xpolakis@otenet.gr)
Date: Tue Feb 01 2000 - 12:13:42 EST
Dinesh Maheshwari wrote (inter alia):
> Ramanujan was ultimately helped by Hardy, but Hardy was the 7-8th of
> the list of the then-prominent British mathematicians that Ramanujan
> approached and by that time he was so poor that the first thing he
> asked Hardy was for a scholarship so that he could feed himself properly.
Quoting Ramanujan's 2nd letter to Hardy:
"If I had given you my methods of proof I am sure you will follow the
London Professor [Hill]. But as a fact, I did not give him any proof but
made some assertions as the following under my new theory. I told him
that the sum of an infinite no. of terms of the series :
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + .... = -1/12 under my theory. If I tell you this you will
at once point out to me the lunatic asylum as my goal."
In: Robert Kanigel: The Man Who Knew Infinity. A Life of the Genius Ramanujan.
London: Abacus, 1992, p. 177.
Antreas
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