STORY OF LOST NOTEBOOK OF SRINIVASAN RAMANUJAN

'LOST NOTEBOOK and Discovery of it. 

G.N. Watson had worked on Ramanujan's papers for many years before World War II. When Watson died in 1965, The Royal Society asked J.M Whittaker to write Watson's biography. For that purpose, Whittaker had asked Mrs. Watson whether he could examine the papers that Watson might have left in his study.

There, in Watson's study, as Whittaker called, papers covered the floor of a fair size room to a depth of about a foot, all jumbled together. By an extraordinary stroke of luck, one of my dips brought up the Ramanujan material.

This material of some 87 loose sheets, was part of a batch of papers Dewsbury ( the registrar at the University of Madras during the years of 1920-1924) had sent to hardy in 1923. and that had, somehow, wound up with Watson.

After his 'lucky dip', Whittaker them to Robert Rankin (Watson successor in Birmingham), who in 1968 handed the 87 loose sheets mentioned, together with other unpublished material to Trinity College, Cambridge.

And there it lay in the Trinity achieves without anyone's knowledge till George Andrews rescued it.

George Andrews, who had worked on problems related to the subject of Ramanujan's last letter to hardy a few months before he died, came to Cambridge to explore if any related material was available in trinity archives. He was thrilled and excited by what he discovered in 87 loose sheets deposited in the archives by Rankin. Later Andrew presented a paper on 'LOST NOTEBOOK' at a meeting of American mathematical Society, Dr. Olga, who was chairing the session, said 'The Discovery of LOST NOTEBOOK is as sensational discovery for the mathematician as a complete draft of the tenth symphony of Beethoven would have been to the musician.