Ramanujan Surprises Again

"Ramanujan surprises again". Some just-discovered depth to the famous "1729" story:

The romanticism rubbed off on the number 1729, which plays a central role in the Hardy-Ramanujan story. "I remember once going to see [Ramanujan] when he was ill at Putney," Hardy wrote later. "I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavourable omen. 'No', he replied, 'it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.'" What Ramanujan meant is that

The anecdote gained the number 1729 fame in mathematical circles, but until recently people believed its curious property was just another random fact Ramanujan carried about in his brain — much like a train spotter remembers train arrival times. What Ono and Trebat-Leder's discovery shows, however, is that it was just the tip of an ice berg. In reality Ramanujan had been busy developing a theory that was several decades ahead of its time and yields results that are interesting to mathematicians even today. He just didn't live long enough to publish it...