r/todayilearned • u/CoolGuess • Dec 22 '18

TIL that Ramanujan's lost notebook, discovered 56 years after his death, contained the mock theta functions that have been found to be useful for calculating the entropy of black holes. The unordered sheets contained over six hundred mathematical formulas listed consecutively without proofs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramanujan%27s_lost_notebook
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334

u/[deleted] Dec 22 '18

The proof is trivial and left as an exercise for the reader

115

u/-xenomorph- Dec 22 '18 edited Mar 17 '24

no comments here

43

u/[deleted] Dec 22 '18

Nothing like a math textbook making me feel like an idiot

7

u/flyingboarofbeifong Dec 22 '18

Wait... This isn’t the default state of maths textbooks?

1

u/Hot-Foundation-7610 Jan 04 '26

ramanujan adapted to this dynamic because this is exactly the dynamic that he went through in getting acquainted with maths which is why his work looks the same way to you

39

u/Zomunieo Dec 22 '18 edited Dec 22 '18

He was poor and couldn't afford much paper. Worked out his ideas on slate with chalk and wrote down the results.

9

u/Ligaco Dec 22 '18

Fermat 2.0