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K-State Today

April 12, 2012

Pennsylvania State University professor to give eighth Brent P. Smith Memorial Lecture today

Submitted by Reta McDermott

George Andrews, Evan Pugh professor of mathematics at Pennsylvania State University, will present the eighth Brent P. Smith Memorial Lecture at 2:30 p.m. today in 1018 Throckmorton Hall. His lecture is titled "The Prescient Ramanujan."

The discovery of Ramanujan's Lost Notebook in 1976 provided a number of surprises. Often Ramanujan had anticipated in 1919-1920 – and, in fact, gone beyond – many results found by others in the last half of the 20th century. Andrews shall discuss a number of these related to continued fractions, partitions, and other number-theoretic topics. He will conclude with a partition function difference problem solved partially by Richmond and Szekeres in 1978. This problem was effectively fully solved in the Lost Notebook, and its study has led to some unexpected consequences.