Highly Composite Number
A Composite Number (also called a Superabundant Number) is a number 
which has more Factorsthan any other number less than . In other words, 
exceeds 
for all 
, where 
isthe Ramanujan, 
who found the first 100or so, and superabundant by Alaoglu and Erdös (1944).
There are an infinite number of highly composite numbers, and the first few are 2, 4, 6, 12, 24, 36, 48, 60, 120, 180, 240,360, 720, 840, 1260, 1680, 2520, 5040, ... (Sloane's A002182). Ramanujan (1915) listed 102 up to 6746328388800 (butomitted 293, 318, 625, 600, and 29331862500). Robin (1983) gives the first 5000 highly composite numbers, and a comprehensivesurvey is given by Nicholas (1988).
If
 | (1) |
- 1. The Primes 2, 3, ...,
form a string of consecutive Primes, - 2. The exponents are nonincreasing, so
, and - 3. The final exponent
is always 1, except for the two cases 
and 
, where it is 2.
Let 
be the number of highly composite numbers 
. Ramanujan (1915) showed that
 | (2) |
such that | (3) |
such that | (4) |
References
Alaoglu, L. and Erdös, P. ``On Highly Composite and Similar Numbers.'' Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 56, 448-469, 1944. Andree, R. V. ``Ramanujan's Highly Composite Numbers.'' Abacus 3, 61-62, 1986. Berndt, B. C. Ramanujan's Notebooks, Part IV. New York: Springer-Verlag, p. 53, 1994. Dickson, L. E. History of the Theory of Numbers, Vol. 1: Divisibility and Primality. New York: Chelsea, p. 323, 1952. Flammenkamp, A. http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/~achim/highly.html. Honsberger, R. Mathematical Gems I. Washington, DC: Math. Assoc. Amer., p. 112, 1973. Honsberger, R. ``An Introduction to Ramanujan's Highly Composite Numbers.'' Ch. 14 in Mathematical Gems III. Washington, DC: Math. Assoc. Amer., pp. 193-207, 1985. Kanigel, R. The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan. New York: Washington Square Press, p. 232, 1991. Nicholas, J.-L. ``On Highly Composite Numbers.'' In Ramanujan Revisited: Proceedings of the Centenary Conference (Ed. G. E. Andrews, B. C. Berndt, and R. A. Rankin). Boston, MA: Academic Press, pp. 215-244, 1988. Ramanujan, S. ``Highly Composite Numbers.'' Proc. London Math. Soc. 14, 347-409, 1915. Ramanujan, S. Collected Papers. New York: Chelsea, 1962. Robin, G. ``Méthodes d'optimalisation pour un problème de théories des nombres.'' RAIRO Inform. Théor. 17, 239-247, 1983. Sloane, N. J. A. SequenceA002182/M1025in ``An On-Line Version of the Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences.''http://www.research.att.com/~njas/sequences/eisonline.html and Sloane, N. J. A. and Plouffe, S.The Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. San Diego: Academic Press, 1995. Wells, D. The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers. New York: Penguin Books, p. 128, 1986.
- Sarrus Linkage
- Sarrus Number
- SAS Theorem
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