The Number 1729
April 3, 2021
The genius mathematician Ramanujan died very young. On his deathbed, his friend and mentor G.H Hardy came in to try to cheer him up. He said, “Ramanujan, I came in on a taxi and the license plate, it’s very boring. It’s 1729.” And on his deathbed, Ramanujan still had the wit and faculty to say, “Oh, that’s not boring. It’s the sum of two cubes in two different ways” That was Ramanujan’s relationship with numbers. It was not his business or work. It was something more. Numbers were his art, poetry, joy, play, music, love… They consumed him. What is