FAQ About Srinivasa Ramanujan

The number 1729 is known as the Hardy-Ramanujan number. The story goes that when G.H. Hardy visited Ramanujan in the hospital, he mentioned that he had arrived in taxi cab number 1729, a number he thought to be uninteresting. Ramanujan immediately responded that 1729 was fascinating because it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways: 1729 = 1³ + 12³ = 9³ + 10³.