Why is 1729 called the Ramanujan number?
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The number 1729 is known as the Ramanujan number because of a famous anecdote involving the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan.
1729 is also known as Ramanujan number or Hardy–Ramanujan number, named after an anecdote of the British mathematician G. H. Hardy when he visited Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan in hospital.
In their conversation, Hardy stated that the number 1729 from a taxicab he rode was a “dull” number and “hopefully it is not unfavourable omen”, but Ramanujan otherwise stated it is a number that can be expressed as the sum of two cubic numbers in two different ways.
This conversation in the aftermath led to a new class of numbers known as the taxicab number. 1729 is the second taxicab number.
1729 was also found in one of Ramanujan’s notebooks dated years before the incident and was noted by French mathematician Frénicle de Bessy in 1657.