The final writings of mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan are the focus of the 2013 Howard Rowlee Lecture, 4 p.m. April 25 in 115 Avery Hall. The talk, "Ramanujan's Lost Notebook and its Mysteries," will be led by George Eyre Andrews of Penn State University.
The talk is free and open to the public.
The topic grew from research conducted by Andrews in 1976 while at the Trinity College Library in Cambridge, Mass. He was examining papers from the estate of G.N. Watson and discovered a collection of more than 100 pages written by Ramanujan.
"Examination of the pages revealed that this work must have been written during the last year of his life in 1919-1920," Andrews said. "I dubbed this manuscript 'Ramanujan's Lost Notebook.' Up until that moment, the only information available about this time in Ramanujan's life came from an enigmatic letter that Ramanujan wrote to Hardy in early 1920. This incredible document and its quite amazing mathematics has formed a major theme in my life."
In the talk, Andrews will discuss the results of the "Lost Notebook" and subsequent implications.
Andrews is a mathematician working in analysis and combinatorics.
A donation by Howard E. Rowlee Jr. funds the lecture series. The annual lecture seeks to bring internationally acclaimed scholars in the mathematical sciences to UNL to promote public understanding of mathematical research and to stimulate the environment for mathematics research on campus.