Ramanujan’s Theory of Divergent Series

In a letter written to A. Holmboe on January 16, 1826, Abel [3] declared that “Divergent series are in general deadly, and it is shameful that anyone dare to base any proof on them.” This admonition would have been vehemently debated by Ramanujan. Much like Euler, Ramanujan employed divergent series in a variety of ways to establish a diversity of results, most of them valid but a few not so. Divergent series are copious throughout Ramanujan’s notebooks, but especially in Chapter 6 of the second notebook, or in Chapter 8 of the first notebook. Since Ramanujan always uses equality signs in stating identities that involve one or more divergent series, one might be led to believe that Ramanujan probably made no distinction between convergent and divergent series. However, the occasional discourse in Chapter 6 is firm evidence that Ramanujan made such a distinction.