The Hindu : International / India & World : Ramanujan's work highlighted at U.S. meet

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Friday, Nov 26, 2004

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International - India & World

Ramanujan's work highlighted at U.S. meet

By A Special Correspondent

The work of the Indian mathematical genius, Srinivasa Ramanujan, was highlighted at an International Conference on Additive Number Theory held at the University of Florida, Gainesville, during November 17-20. Additive Number Theory is the study of the representations of integers as sums of other integers and the implications of such representations. The conference covered three broad areas of Additive Number Theory — (i) partitions and q-series, (ii) Goldbach and Waring Type problems, and (iii) bases and their aymptotics.

"This was the first conference to discuss these three areas and their inter-relationships under one umbrella," said Professor Krishnaswami Alladi, Chairman, Department of Mathematics, University of Florida. The conference, organised by Professors Alladi, Frank Garvan and Alexander Berkovich, had 60 talks. Ramanujan's important work on partition congruences, q-series identities, mock theta functions, and the circle method featured prominently in these presentations.

Evan Pugh Professor George Andrews of the Pennsylvania State University gave the opening lecture of the conference on partitions with short sequences and Ramanujan's mock theta functions.

In his talk, entitled `The return of the mock theta functions,' Emeritus Professor Basil Gordon of UCLA spoke about efforts to construct a general theory to understand the mock theta functions, focussing on his recent research with his former student Richard McIntosh on new mock theta functions of orders eight and higher.

Professor Jim Lepowsky of Rutgers University described how the Rogers-Ramanujan identities played a crucial role in the development of vertex operators in the theory of Lie algebras. Other plenary speakers at the conference were Professors Ken Ono of the University of Wisconsin, Jean-Marc Deshouillers of the University of Bordeaux, and Mel Nathanson of the City University of New York. The conference also featured a history lecture by Professor Bruce Berndt of the University of Illinois, who talked about various individuals who played a crucial role in the life of Ramanujan.

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