Ramanujan and Hardy Number

Hi Friends,

Numbers are fascinating. I would like to share one such number known as the Ramanujan and Hardy Number.

G H Hardy was the mentor of the great mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan .

Srinivasa Ramanujan was sick at a hospital in Putney, England.

G H Hardy came to visit him and said, “I arrived in a cab whose number is 1729 a pretty dull number.”

The sick Ramanujan disagreed. “Oh no, not at all!" he said.

“It is the smallest number that can be written as the sum of two cubes in two different ways!"

Can you prove he was right?

Answer:

Of course he was right. Here are the two ways:

1³ + 12³ = 1 + 1,728 = 1,729

9³ + 10³ = 729 + 1,000 = 1,729

And 1,729 is indeed the smallest such number.

And because of this incident, it is now known as the Ramanujan-Hardy number.