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Comment by hi41 | Hacker News Reader

In the spirit of openness which is the hallmark of FOSS such as GNU/Linux, would this book be scanned and published for all to see? That would be great. Like FOSS, math too belongs to the world. I heard someone say that the university has not published many of his works. That would be sad. If published someone like Terrence Tao could write formal proofs for them like he and his team did some improvements for the work by Yitang Zhang.

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The notebook (like Ramanujan's three previously known notebooks) has already been published, in 5 volumes by Bruce Berndt and George Andrews, with extensive annotation (e.g. just flipping at random, in the third volume Chapter 6 is called "Theorems about the Partition Function on Pages 189 and 182", and occupies 24 pages, and indeed contains formal proofs etc). A raw scan of the notebook(s) is even available online: http://ramanujan.sirinudi.org

Unfortunately the actual notebook links on that site appear broken

Just enter a page number; it works fine. Or if you wish, here are the direct links:

http://ramanujan.sirinudi.org/Volumes/01/01.pdf

http://ramanujan.sirinudi.org/Volumes/02/02.pdf

http://ramanujan.sirinudi.org/Volumes/03/03.pdf

http://ramanujan.sirinudi.org/Volumes/04/04.pdf

Ramanujan's total known/preserved output today is 37 published papers and these four notebooks; all of it is available on the site. The notebooks have been transcribed and published in several volumes with explanation (as mentioned above); those are the only thing not included on this site (and arguably, not "by" Ramanujan).

This sounds exactly like the thing I’ve kind of wanted—a compilation/overview of Ramanujan’s work, ideally with commentary. I’ll have to take a closer look at this. What I’d really like is something akin to Yves Hellegouarch’s Invitation to the Mathematics of Fermat-Wiles which seems to be not only out of print, but rather rare now (it’s listed on Amazon at over 400 bucks although that could be algorithmic madness among the sellers).

I think Bruce Berndt's Number Theory in the Spirit of Ramanujan (2006) may be along the lines of what you're looking for, and also possibly G. H. Hardy's Ramanujan: Twelve Lectures on subjects Suggested by His Life and Work (originally 1940, but republished 1991/1999 by AMS with further commentary by Berndt). I'm not qualified to say for sure, as they get too hard for me pretty fast. :) [Some of Ramanujan's easier papers I was able to read (very slowly) for quite a few pages though, such as the one on highly composite numbers.]

FWIW, https://archive.org/details/invitationtomath0000hell .

That is quite possibly the most disappointing URL in the history of URLs. Invitation to Math Hell, indeed.

His penmanship is quite aesthetic

Yeah, when I read "more than one hundred pages written [...] in Ramanujan's distinctive handwriting" in the Wikipedia article, I was thinking "almost indecipherable scrawl", but this borders on calligraphy...

All those links 404 for me

They are http ... some browsers may default to not loading them.

Thanks, I'd set my browser to always switch to https

The page number selector appears to link to working PDFs.

> If published someone like Terrence Tao could write formal proofs for them like he and his team did some improvements for the work by Yitang Zhang.

From the second paragraph:

> George Andrews and Bruce C. Berndt (2005, 2009, 2012, 2013, 2018) have published several books in which they give proofs for Ramanujan's formulas included in the notebook

FOSS != piracy

And, frankly, I find it pretty upsetting that you seem to negate that equation.

He's been dead for 104 years, where's the piracy?

Sorry for nitpicking, but just trying to clarify what seems like a double negative - do you mean "to affirm that equation", i.e. that the author claims they are equal?

I guess you're right, negating an inequality is likely the same as affirming an equality? I am not a native speaker.

Is that not the same logically in every language?

No, in Spanish double negations are not positive statements.

I think the parent commenter was using the word 'equation' in its colloquial sense to refer to any mathematical expression or statement, despite their statement containing a 'not equals to' symbol, rather than actually equating them (which would have an equals sign).

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