Assuming an averaged form of Mertens’ conjecture and that the ordinates of the non-trivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function are linearly independent over the rationals, we analyse the finer structure of the terms in a well-known formula of Ramanujan.

We consider the sum $\sum 1/\gamma $ , where $\gamma $ ranges over the ordinates of nontrivial zeros of the Riemann zeta-function in an interval $(0,T]$ , and examine its behaviour as $T \to \infty $ . We show that, after subtracting a smooth approximation $({1}/{4\pi }) \log ^2(T/2\pi ),$ the sum tends to a limit $H \approx -0.0171594$ , which can be expressed as an integral. We calculate H to high accuracy, using a method which has error $O((\log T)/T^2)$ . Our results improve on earlier results by Hassani [‘Explicit approximation of the sums over the imaginary part of the non-trivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function’, Appl. Math. E-Notes16 (2016), 109–116] and other authors.