Ramanujan's Lost Notebook: History and Content

Ramanujan's Lost Notebook: History and Content

In the spring of 1976, George Andrews discovered Ramanujan's "Lost Notebook" in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. The "Lost Notebook" is not a notebook, but a sheaf of over 100 handwritten pages made by Ramanujan during the last year of his life. It was not until the centenary of his birth on December 22, 1987 that the "Lost Notebook," along with several unpublished manuscripts, his "Quarterly Reports", and other miscellaneous papers, were published by Narosa. During the past 20 years, Andrews and the speaker have been editing all of the material in "The Lost Notebook and Other Unpublished Papers". Our goal has been to provide proofs for all of the results in the Narosa publication. In this lecture, we give a brief history of the "Lost Notebook," a general description of its content, and examples of some of the more interesting formulas found in the "Lost Notebook".