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Did Littlewood actually find a mistake in Ramanujan's work?


There are a couple of scenes where professor Littlewood (Toby Jones) tells Hardy (Irons) that he has proven one of Ramanujan's theorems to be incorrect. What is historically accurate?

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There was a mistake in an early formula concerning partitions, which was contained in that letter which Ramanujan sent to England. This mistake was quickly discovered by Hardy and Littlewood even before they invited Ramanujan over. In general many of Ramanujan's results are wrong, but the majority of them have meanwhile been shown to be correct. Alas, without proofs it was hard work to find out which formula belongs to which kind.

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Thanks "holtor", I would never have been able to find that info myself.

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This may be of interest here...

K. Srinivasa Rao has said "As for his place in the world of Mathematics, we quote Bruce C. Berndt: 'Paul Erdős has passed on to us Hardy's personal ratings of mathematicians. Suppose that we rate mathematicians on the basis of pure talent on a scale from 0 to 100, Hardy gave himself a score of 25, J. E. Littlewood 30, David Hilbert 80, and Ramanujan 100.'" During a lecture at IIT Madras in May 2011, Berndt stated that over the last 40 years, as nearly all of Ramanujan's theorems have been proven right, there had been greater appreciation of Ramanujan's work and brilliance, and that Ramanujan's work was now pervading many areas of modern mathematics and physics.



My body's a cage, it's been used and abused...and I...LIKE IT!!

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Excellent - thanks for that perspective !

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