Ramanujan's ``lost'' notebook. IV: Stacks and alternating parity in partitions (Q793872)

[For part III of this paper see the author in ibid. 41, 186--208 (1981; Zbl 0477.33009).] While the author was examining the papers of the late G. N. Watson in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge in the year 1976, an additional book of unpublished notes by the Indian mathematician was discovered. The presence of this co-called ``lost'' notebook had for some time been suspected on circumstantial grounds, but it had not hitherto come to light. See \textit{G. E. Andrews}, Am. Math. Mon. 86, 89--108 (1979; Zbl 0401.01003). In his notebooks, Ramanujan gave a large number of fascinating identities, mostly without proof. These results are closely associated with \(q\)-hypergeometric function theory and the theory of partitions. In this paper, the author starts from the generating function of the number of partitions of \(n\) in which the parts (arranged in ascending order) alternate in parity starting with the smallest part odd. This generating function is associated with a number of identities stated but not proved by Ramanujan and which provide substantial combinatorial information on the above mentioned partition. The author then proves these identities by some extremely interesting but rather lengthy manipulations. This paper is included by relating Ramanujan's identities to the combinatorial theory of stacks. The formulae given are too lengthy for inclusion in a brief review of this nature.