Roman numeral: MDCCXXIX
1729 is a special number which is known as Hardy Ramanujan number. It is also a natural number which lies between 1728 and 1730.
It was the year of 1918. Srinivasa Ramanujan, the man who knew infinity was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was admitted to a hospital. His friend, Godfray Hardy who was a professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, arrived for a visit by taxi.The taxicab number was 1729. To him, this number seemed quite dull and boring.
Hardy hoped that it was not an unfavorable omen. Hearing this, Ramanujam replied “it is a very interesting number as it is the smallest number expressed as the sum of cubes of two numbers in two different ways.” He went on to describe these two ways as below:
1x1x1 = 1
12 x12x12= 1728
1t + 12t = 1 + 1728 = 1729
9 x 9 x 9 = 729
10 x10 x 10 = 1000
9t + 10t = 729 + 1000 = 1729
1729 is the sum of cubes of 12 and 1 and sum of cubes of 9 and 10.
1729 is also known as taxicab number and is called Hardy Ramanujan number.
Srinivasa Ramanujan and Godfray Hardy
Mona Narain
PRT (Mathematics)
