1729 (number) - References To 1729

References To 1729

• The television show Futurama contains several jokes about the Hardy–Ramanujan number. In one episode, the robot Bender receives a Christmas card from the machine that built him labeled "Son #1729". Ken Keeler, a writer on the show with a Ph. D. in applied mathematics, said "that 'joke' alone is worth six years of grad school". In another episode, Bender's serial number is revealed to be the sum of two cubes: his number is 2716057 = 9523 + (−951)3, while that of fellow robot Flexo is 3370318 = 1193 + 1193. (This datum is one of the pieces of evidence the episode uses to establish that Bender and Flexo are a pair of good-and-evil twins.) The starship Nimbus displays the hull registry number BP-1729, which simultaneously riffs on the USS Enterprise's NCC-1701. Finally, the episode The Farnsworth Parabox contains a montage sequence where the heroes visit several parallel universes in rapid succession, one of which is labeled "Universe 1729" (the universe where Fry, Leela and Bender are all giant rude talking bobbleheads). In the movie, "Bender's Big Score", the number of the taxi cab Fry takes home in the past (87539319) is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in three different ways.

• The physicist Richard Feynman demonstrated his abilities at mental calculation when, during a trip to Brazil, he was challenged to a calculating contest against an experienced abacist. The abacist happened to challenge Feynman to compute the cube root of 1729.03; since Feynman knew that 1729 was equal to 123+1 (because one cubic foot equals 1728 cubic inches), he was able to compute by hand an accurate value for its cube root using interpolation techniques (specifically, binomial expansion). The abacist had to solve the problem by a more laborious algorithmic method, and lost the competition to Feynman. The anecdote is related by Feynman in his memoir, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!.

• Some reports say that the octal equivalent (3301) was the password to Xerox PARC's main computer.

• The play Proof (and its adapted film) by David Auburn also contains a reference to 1729.

• The movie Lucky Number Slevin also references the number 1729 in association with the character Nick Fisher.

• The 2007 play A Disappearing Number by the Théâtre de Complicité company references the number. One of the main characters, Ruth, is a mathematician and 1729 are the last four digits of her phone number, paying homage to two of her heroes: Ramanujan and Hardy.