A mathematician unearths Ramanujan’s Lost Notebooks
By Regina Nuzzo
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
March 29, 2005
In high school, mathematician George E. Andrews was told by a guidance counselor that it was impossible to find a truly interesting career, so he should find something dull but practical to study. It turned out to be great advice for Andrews to ignore. “I chose to do what I loved,” he says. And the mathematical puzzles he grew to love possessed surprising links to ideas throughout 20th-century science and mathematics. Andrews has followed his mathematical inspirations through a career that has taken him from the splendor of a footnoted formula to the unearthing of a mathematical treasure in a university library in Cambridge, England. Along the way, he has solved longstanding mathematical problems and made significant contributions to the fields of number theory, combinatorics, and theoretical physics.
