Mathematicians find 'magic key' to drive Ramanujan's taxi-cab number
Wednesday, October 14, 2015 - 12:00
in Physics & Chemistry
Taxi-cab numbers, among the most beloved integers in math, trace their origins to 1918 and what seemed like a casual insight by the Indian genius Srinivasa Ramanujan. Now mathematicians at Emory University have discovered that Ramanujan did not just identify the first taxi-cab number - 1729 - and its quirky properties. He showed how the number relates to elliptic curves and K3 surfaces - objects important today in string theory and quantum physics.