Friendship

Rekha Sahay

Mathematician Ramanujam didn’t have any close friends and someone asked him the reason. He replied that although he wanted to have close friends but nobody was up to his expectations.

When asked how he expected his friend to be, he replied, “like numbers 220 and 284!”The person got confused and asked what is the connection between friendship and these numbers!

Ramanujam asked him to find the divisors of each number! With much difficulty, the person derived and listed them as, 220 → 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, 20, 22, 44, 55, 110, 220284 →1, 2, 4, 71, 142, 284Ramanujam then asked the person to exclude the numbers 220 and 284 and asked the sum of the remaining divisors.The person was astonished to find,220 → 1+2+4+5+10+11+20+22+44+55+110=284284 →1+2+4+71+142=220

Ramanujam explained that an ideal friendship should be like these numbers, to complement each other. Even when one is absent, the other should represent the friend!

Hats off to this great mind and genius who is on the world’s top list of mathematicians!

 

 

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