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J E Littlewood (18851977) was a British mathematician well known for his joint work with
G H Hardy on Warings problem and the development of the circle method. In the rst quarter
of the 20th century, they created a school of analysis considered the best in the world. Littlewood
rmly believed that research should be oset by
a certain amount of teaching. In this exposition,
we will highlight several notable results obtained
by Littlewood in the area of number theory.
1. Introduction
John Edensor Littlewood was one of the most well-known
mathematicians during the rst part of the 20th century.
Most notable among his doctoral students were A O L
Atkin, Sarvadaman Chowla, Harold Davenport, A E Ingham and H P F Swinnerton-Dyer. For ocial reasons,
Srinivasa Ramanujan is also considered as one of Littlewoods students.
In his obituary on Littlewood, Burkill [1] observes that
around 1900, there was no British school of analysis worthy of the name and it is due to G H Hardy and J E
Littlewood that England owes a debt of gratitude for
building by 1930 a school of analysis second to none in
the world.
M Ram Murty, a
Canadian mathematician,
is currently Queen's
Research Chair in
Mathematics and
Philosophy at the Queen's
University, Canada. He is
also an adjunct professor
at several institutions in
India (TIFR in Mumbai,
IMSc in Chennai and HRI
in Allahabad.) He also
teaches Indian philosophy
at Queen's University and
has recently published a
book titled Indian
Philosophy and has written
many popular monographs
for students of
mathematics.
2. Prime Numbers
Littlewoods rst result in prime number theory concerned the error term in the prime counting function.
If (x) denotes the number of primes up to x, then the
prime number theorem tells us that
(x) li x,
Keywords
Circle method, zeroes of Riemann zeta function, Diophantine approximation, Waring problem, Goldbach conjecture.
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GENERAL ARTICLE
where
dt
2 log t
is called the logarithmic integral. Here, the symbol
A(x) B(x) means that A(x)/B(x) tends to 1 as x
tends to innity. Numerical evidence seemed to suggest
that
(x) < li x,
li x =
1
(s) =
,
ns
n=1
790
(s) > 1.
GENERAL ARTICLE
By virtue of the unique factorization of the natural numbers one can write this as an innite product over prime
numbers:
1
1
1 s
,
(s) =
p
p
for (s) > 1. In his 1860 paper, Riemann derived the
analytic continuation and functional equation for (s).
More precisely, he showed that
s
1s
s/2
(1s)/2
(s) =
(1 s).
2
2
Here,
the Euler gamma function is dened by (z) =
z1
x ex dx for (z) > 0. Beautiful as the above
0
functional equation is, it is impractical to use in many
questions of analytic number theory. In 1921, Hardy
and Littlewood [3] derived the following approximate
functional equation:
ns + (s)
n(1s) + O(x )
(s) =
nx
ny
+ O(|t|1/2 y 1 ) ,
where s = + it, t real, and 2xy = |t|, with
(s) = 2(2)s1 (1 s) sin
s
.
2
Hardy and
Littlewood showed
that the Riemann
zeta function has
infinitely many
zeroes on the critical
line
(s) = 1/2.
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GENERAL ARTICLE
T
0
1
|( + it)|2dt = T (log T log 2 + 2 1) +O(T + ),
2
792
GENERAL ARTICLE
showed that the set of exceptions to Littlewoods conjecture has Hausdor dimension zero.
5. Warings Problem and the Development of
the Circle Method
The circle method originates with Ramanujan as can
be seen by entries of his rst letter to G H Hardy in
1913 (see for example, (1.14) on page 8 of [10] as well as
Selberg [11]). After his arrival in England, Hardy and
Ramanujan applied the method to derive the asymptotic
formula for the partition function. After Ramanujans
premature demise, Hardy and Littlewood developed this
method further and applied it rst to tackle Warings
problem which we now explain.
A celebrated theorem of Lagrange states that every natural number can be written as the sum of four square
numbers. Using elementary number theory, one can
show that numbers of the form 8n + 7 cannot be written as the sum of three or fewer squares. Indeed, any
square mod 8 is congruent to 0, 1 or 4 and it is impossible to choose three of these numbers (with replacement)
to obtain 7 (mod 8). In 1770, Edmund Waring asked if
generally, for any value of k, there is a number g(k) such
that every number can be written as a sum of g(k) number of k-th powers and such that nothing smaller than
g(k) works. Thus, Lagranges theorem states g(2) = 4.
Waring conjectured further that g(3) = 9, g(4) = 19
and so on. That g(k) exists was shown by Hilbert in
1909. However, obtaining an explicit formula for g(k)
was another matter. Hilberts method, though elementary in the technical sense of the word, employed complicated algebraic identities and it was dicult to obtain
any further information regarding g(k) from his method.
Moreover, if n can be written as a sum of r k-th powers,
is it possible to obtain an asymptotic formula for the
number of such representations? The answers to these
questions were not accessible by Hilberts method. They
793
GENERAL ARTICLE
(1 + 1/k)s
Sk,s (n)ns/k1 ,
(s/k)
where Sk,s (n) 1. The factor Sk,s (n) is called the singular series and can be written as a product over primes
A(p),
Sk,s (n) =
p
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GENERAL ARTICLE
Then,
n2
,
2 log 3 n
p
n ,
p(n)
1+
(p 1)3
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GENERAL ARTICLE
x
log2 x
where
S(H) =
p
x
,
logk x
p (H)
1
p
1
1
p
k
,
796
GENERAL ARTICLE
Usually, Littlewood
would write the
penultimate draft
of their joint paper
and Hardy would
write the flowery
prose of which he
was a master.
797
GENERAL ARTICLE
Suggested Reading
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[8]
210, 1934.
the mean square of
12 it
[10]
[11]
[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]
[16]
[17]
[18]
1978.
798