Futurama: 15 Obscure Easter Eggs & References You Probably Missed
15. The Number 1729
Ever notice how often the number 1729 appears throughout the show? That's kind of a specific number to appear more than once, right? In The Farnsworth Parabox, one of the universes Fry visits is Universe 1729. In Xmas Story, Bender gets a card that reveals hes his moms 1729th son. The Nimbus, Zapp Brannigans ship, has a registration number of 1729. So whats the deal? Well, 1729 is referred to as the Hardy-Ramanujan number, or the taxicab number, because of a story from mathematician G.H. Hardy. The story goes that once when he went to visit fellow mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, Hardy rode in a taxi with the number 1729. He remarked that this was sort of a boring number, but Ramanujan responded that its actually a very interesting one, explaining that its the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.
