Functional Family: Mock theta mystery solved Erica Klarreich A pair of mathematicians has solved a problem that had tantalized number-theory researchers for more than 8 decades. It is the so-called final problem of the legendary Indian mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan. In the years before his death in 1920, Ramanujan studied theta functions, which are numerical relationships that show special symmetries. On his deathbed, Ramanujan wrote a letter to his British collaborator G. H. Hardy, in which he listed 17 complicated formulas for new functions. He called them mock theta functions because they had some properties similar to those of theta...