Once when he was ill in England, Hardy visited Ramanujan in the hospital. Hardy mentioned casually that the number of the taxicab that had brought him was 1729, which, he thought was 'rather a dull one'. At this, Ramanujan replied: "No,it is a very interesting number! It is the smallest number expressible as a sum of two cubes in two different ways". That is 1729 = 13 + 123 = 93 + 103. This is one of the best known anecdotes in the history of mathematics , and after this incident, the number 1729is known as the Hardy - Ramanujan number!
An Initiative By MATH CLUB KENDRIYA VIDYALAYA OTTAPALAM
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