Subject: Re: [HM] Who Ramanujan wrote to before Hardy
From: David M. Bressoud (bressoud@macalester.edu)
Date: Wed Mar 15 2000 - 08:56:30 EST
>
> Every source I have read on Ramanujan says that his only textbook was
> G. S. Carr, _Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure Mathematics_
> (F. Hodgson, London, 1886).
>
> Is Carr the "book on Jacobian elliptic functions" you mention, or did
> Ramanujan actually have at least two advanced mathematical textbooks?
>
Carr's book was very influential on Ramanujan, and apparently he had access
to it while still a high school student. But he also had access to the
library at the Kumbakonam Government College (which he attended for one
year), and eventually he had access to the mathematical library at the
University of Madras.
Bruce Berndt has recently visited the University of Madras library where he
has compiled a list of every math book that now exists in that library that
was present at the time Ramanujan had access. It is a very rich list,
though we have no ideas which books Ramanujan might actually have read.
The "book on Jacobian elliptic functions" is believed to have been Alfred
George Greenhill's _The Applications of Elliptic Functions_.
David M Bressoud
DeWitt Wallace Professor and Chair bressoud@macalester.edu
Mathematics and Computer Science Department 651-696-6559
Macalester College, 1600 Grand Avenue FAX: 651-696-6518
Saint Paul, MN 55105, USA http://www.macalester.edu/~bressoud
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