Abstract

G. H. Hardy’s remarkable Indian protégé Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920) is without doubt the most significant mathematician who is known to have solved one of Dudeney’s puzzles. When a student friend at Cambridge read out an arithmetical problem from Dudeney’s “Perplexities” column in the latest issue of The Strand Magazine, specifically the Grand Christmas Double Number of December 1914, Ramanujan solved it straightaway and in a generalised form, without recourse to pencil and paper. The story of this astonishing display of mathematical skill is told in some detail and its supposed implications discussed.