Howard Rowlee Lecture Series 2013

Ramanujan's Lost Notebook and its Mysteries

George Eyre Andrews, of the Pennsylvania State University, delivered the 2013 Howard Rowlee Lecture on April 25, 2013.

Abstract

In 1976, I visited the Trinity College Library in Cambridge to examine papers from the estate of G.N. Watson. In one box, there was a collection of more than 100 pages written by Ramanujan. Examination of the pages revealed that this work must have been written during the last year of his life in 1919-1920. I dubbed this manuscript "Ramanujan's Lost Notebook". Up until that moment, the only information available about this time in Ramanujan's life came from an enigmatic letter that Ramanujan wrote to Hardy in early 1920. This incredible document and its quite amazing mathematics has formed a major theme in my life. In this talk, I will discuss some of the results in the Lost Notebook and their subsequent implications. If time allows, I will describe a few of the related non-mathematical incidents that have taken place.

About the Speaker

George Andrews

George Eyre Andrews is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and former president of the American Mathematical Society. His contributions include several monographs and more than 250 research and popular articles on special functions, combinatorics and applications. Dr. Andrews is considered to be the world's leading expert in the theory of integer partitions. In 1976 he discovered Ramanujan's Lost Notebook