taxicab number

Meaning

Noun

• The nth taxicab number, typically denoted Ta(n) or Taxicab(n), is the smallest number that can be expressed as a sum of two positive algebraic cubes in n distinct ways.

Origin

• From an anecdote of the mathematician G. H. Hardy, who went to visit Srinivasa Ramanujan in a taxicab number 1729. Hardy suggested that the number seemed unremarkable, whereupon Ramanujan identified it as having this mathematical property.