I just found, looking for the ground state energy (below) of string theory, Pierre Ramond's reminiscences at the National Accelerator Laboratory (NAL). I have these reminiscences myself.
I did remember that factor $\frac{ -2 }{24}$ , more precisely $\frac{D -2}{24}$, from lectures I attended at UCSB in the 70s, and in Mexico, during my close to 18 years there. Now I discover this work by Ono et al. (below), and find this number again. Maybe there is something there, maybe not. What do partitions of a natural number have to do with String Theory? At this state of the game, your guess is as good as mine.
I take a definitely infrarealistic tone.
Ramond writes about Wheaton, NAL, and all that. He started the Theory Group There!, my advisor, Bob Sugar, spent the academic year 1973-1974 there, I spent a sabbatical (1994-1995) there. Now Fermilab is dead. Seems like hundreds of years have passed, I live next door to a corpse in Warrenville, and there is no fundamental theory of forces. Nature has not being nice to us.
With every little glimpse of light I get excited. Will those fractions with 24 lead anywhere?
Don't know.
I leave you with this non-sensical formula:
$\Sigma_{n=1}^\infty n= -\frac{1}{12}$
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