On Ramanujan's Double Inequality for the Gamma Function

Ramanujan presented (without proof) the following double inequalityfor the gamma function: .Recently, Karatsuba established that these inequalities holdfor x 1. We show that this can be slightly improved: the inequalitieshold for all x 0, even if we replace 1/100 by where f(x) = (1/)³(x + 1)(e/x)^x]⁶–8x³–4x²–x.Moreover, and 1/30 are the best possible constant terms. 2000Mathematics Subject Classification 33B15 (primary); 26D15, 26D20(secondary).