Ramanujan's Work Algorithms

An exhaustive reverse-engineering of Srinivasa Ramanujan's methods, restricted to pre-1920 mathematics. Thirty-three reconstructed strategies across five problem categories, traced against eighty sampled formulae from the notebooks and lost notebook. Verified, updated, then extended to modern equivalent starting points with three worked demonstrations. A separate 82-node worldwide frontier tree covers the Hardy–Littlewood approximation lineage through Vinogradov, Bourgain, Écalle, Keating–Snaith, and Kelley–Meka, extending to motivic periods and the cosmic Galois group (Brown), Feynman integral relations (Broadhurst–Roberts), arithmetic quantum field theory (Harvard CMSA 2024), the prime geodesic theorem for large genus (Wu–Xue 2022), higher Teichmüller & Hitchin components (Pollicott–Sharp), and SL(2,ℝ) orbit-closure rigidity (Eskin–Mirzakhani–Mohammadi) — twenty branches in total, placing each within the Langlands programme.

33 strategies 80 formulae 82 approx. methods pre-1920 reconstruction William Chuang / Logarchéon 2026
01 The Exhaustive Decision Tree

All strategies are restricted to mathematics available before 1920. Post-Ramanujan frameworks (formal modular forms theory, Zwegers mock-theta shadows, Garsia–Milne bijection, Deligne’s proof) are excluded from the reconstruction.

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Strategy probability ranking — all 33 strategies

Estimated from 80 sampled Ramanujan formulae · click any bar

02 Formula Corpus — 80 Entries

Original 30 formulae used to build the first-pass tree, plus 50 additional from the notebooks and lost notebook, each traced back through the algorithm. verified = algorithm correctly routes the derivation. updated = algorithm required an update to route it. extended = derivation requires an additional strategy.

#FormulaCategoryPrimary strategyStarting pointStatus
03 Starting Points — Historical and Modern

What Ramanujan actually used as raw material

Modern equivalent starting points

The following are today's analogues of the raw material Ramanujan started from — accessible without post-1920 theoretical frameworks, but in 2026 form.

04 Three Modern Demonstrations

Each demonstration starts from a modern equivalent of a Ramanujan-era starting point and traces the algorithm to a verifiable result, none of which Ramanujan knew about.

05 The Approximation Methods Tree

Techniques Ramanujan would have learned or encountered through Hardy, Littlewood, and the broader international analytic tradition — extended to the worldwide frontier as of 2026. Eighty-two methods across twenty branches, spanning Stokes (1850) through Kelley–Meka (2023): oscillatory integrals, Laplace-type integrals, exponential sums (Weyl, van der Corput, Vinogradov, Bourgain–Demeter–Guth), circle method and additive number theory, sieve methods, spectral and trace formulae, special function asymptotics, random matrix theory, resurgence and trans-series (Écalle, QED perturbation theory), modern additive combinatorics (Gowers, Green–Tao, Kelley–Meka), motivic periods and the cosmic Galois group (Brown, Broadhurst–Roberts), and Teichmüller dynamics and spectral counting (Wu–Xue, Pollicott–Sharp, Mirzakhani, Eskin–Mirzakhani–Mohammadi). School attribution and frontier status are marked for each.

Selection criterion: top-tier, globally competitive practice. No school — Cambridge, Princeton, Paris, Moscow, Beijing, Tokyo, Seoul, Tel Aviv — is privileged. The criterion is the strongest known result for each problem class.

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