Comments on: ISO Ramanujan's high-res handwriting.

Question: ISO Ramanujan's high-res handwriting.

wemayfreeze — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:09:24 -0800

Can someone help me get high-res scans of Ramanujan's notebooks?

I'm working on a project that uses Ramanujan's handwriting. I'm going to be printing it real big so want the highest quality source material I can get.

Ramanujan's notebooks were first published as photostats in 1957 (cite: Ramanujan, S. Notebooks, 2 vols. Bombay: Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, 1957). Local libraries are coming up empty on this one.

There are low-res scans online here, and a few random pages scattered around the web at higher resolutions.

I need either the book itself (which is out there somewhere, right?) or better scans than what I've found online. Any thoughts?

By: madcaptenor

madcaptenor — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:42:53 -0800

As you might know, Bruce Berndt put out an edited version of Ramanujan's notebooks and so presumably has some idea of the situation. George Andrews might also be able to help; he's long been interested in Ramanujan's "lost notebook" but I think he's not a stranger to the better-known ones too.

By: RichardP

RichardP — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 15:01:59 -0800

You're located near SF, CA, right? I found your cite at the following libraries in the bay area:

UC Berkley's NRLF
The Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in San Jose
Stanford's Mathematical & Computer Sciences Library (search for 1209572)

By: neuron

neuron — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 16:03:49 -0800

Local libraries are coming up empty on this one.

Use interlibrary loan.

By: derforsher

derforsher — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 13:56:57 -0800

There should be a copy of the 1957 book near you. If you're in Europe, here are some more copies (including the 1984 reprint).

If there is not one nearby, you can request it through interlibrary loan like neuron suggested.

If the facsimiles in the book aren't good enough, Trinity College Cambridge has copies of the notebooks. The original notebooks were returned to the University of Madras (library contact page).

By: DU

DU — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 08:56:35 -0800

Coming late to the party, but: Can you vectorize the low-res ones you get? Depending on the original photos and how "real big" you are going to print these, you are probably going to get bitmap artifacts anyway.

By: wemayfreeze

wemayfreeze — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:36:04 -0800

Thanks to all! I ended up using what I had and vectorizing, as DU suggested. We didn't have the time to explore the options others suggested, unfortunately. I appreciate all the help, though!