Abstract
Cut off from England due to the First World War, the German mathematician Issai Schur independently discovered and proved the Rogers–Ramanujan identities and like MacMahon realized their partition-theoretic significance. Schur is most well known for his work in group theory, but his proof of the Rogers–Ramanujan identities has resulted in significant developments in the theory of partitions. Here we describe Schur’s life and work both in group theory and on partitions, and make comparisons with the work of Ramanujan.
This article appeared in The Hindu, India’s National Newspaper, in December 2005 for Ramanujan’s 118th birth anniversary.
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Alladi, K. (2021). Issai Schur: Ramanujan’s German Contemporary. In: Ramanujan's Place in the World of Mathematics. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6241-9_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6241-9_14
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