One of my friends forwarded me an interesting article on Ramanujan. Although I knew most of the facts in the article, it was nice to read it again. A sample passage from the article:
“I rode here today in taxicab number 1729,” Hardy told Ramanujan. “This seems to be a dull number and I hope it’s not an unfavorable omen.” To which Ramanujan replied, “No, it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.”
The two ways 1729 can be expressed are :
1729 = 10^3 + 9^3
1729 = 12^3 + 1^3
The article can be found here : http://www.las.uiuc.edu/alumni/news/fall2006/06fall_lostnotebook.html
