GD and Essay Topics: Mathematicians of India

India has always had a special relationship with Mathematics from ages. This was the country that actually laid the foundation of Mathematics with the invention of “zero”.

By Rushikesh Kamde

Mathematics as a subject has been one of toughest subjects for most students during their school life. A subject we all feared. At the primary-school level, the subject has made us either look like a fool or totally brilliant. Since childhood, all our Mathematics teachers have made various attempts year after year to tell us how good the subject is. They said, “it will help in your career building”, “it will benefit you to understand the world better” and much more. Still not many of us were unable to score well in the subject.

A subject that may be hated by many students, there have been some who loved the subject so much that they turned it into a profession -- Mathematicians. For them, this subject holds a special place in their heart.

India has always had a special relationship with Mathematics from ages. This was the country that actually laid the foundation of Mathematics with the invention of “zero” by world-renowned Mathematician and Astronomer Aryabhata.

The curiosity of India for Mathematics started from the ancient Vedic period, as old as 300 BCE by Katyayana, a Buddhist monk transcending to the post-Vedic period when the famous Mathematician Aryabhata invented zero, extending its legacy to the Medieval period by the Mathematicians such as Narayan Pandit and Nilakantha Somayaji. His legacy is still continuing today. Aryabhata is called the Father of Mathematics. His major work includes, Aryabhatiya, a compendium of Mathematics and Astronomy, which covers Arithmetic, Algebra, Plane Trigonometry, and Spherical Trigonometry. It also contains continued Fractions, Quadratic Equations, Sums-of-Power Series, and a Table of Sines.

Since ancient times, Indian Mathematicians have made a great name for themselves around the world, leaving its rich legacy, giving inspiration to many students to opt for this subject.

Some of the such famous Mathematicians are:

• Bhaskara I: He was the first man to write numbers in the Hindu Decimal System with a circle for the zero.
• Srinivasa Ramanujan: He is one of the most notable Mathematicians of India. His contributions are Mathematical Analysis, Mumber Theory, Infinite Series, and Continued Fractions.
• PC Mahalanobis: Mahalanobis is an Indian scientist and Statistician who has contributed to the design of large-scale sample surveys.
• K S Chandrasekharan: Chandrasekharan made a mark in Mathematics by working on number theory and sum ability. 
• DR Kaperkar: Kaperkar had major contributions to classes of natural numbers, including the Kaprekar Constant.
• CR Rao: Rao is a Mathematician with a huge contribution to estimation theory, statistical inference and linear models’ multivariate analysis, combinatorial design, orthogonal arrays, biometry, statistical genetics, generalized matrix inverses and functional equations.
• Harish Chandra: Chandra is an American Indian Mathematician with the contribution towards representation theory, harmonic analysis on semi-simple Lie groups.
• Satyendranath Bose: Bose is a renowned Indian Physicist who has contributed in Quantum Mechanics, providing the foundation for Bose-Einstein Statistics and the theory of the Bose-Einstein Condensate.
• Shakuntala Devi: She is the first notable female Mathematician of India. She is also known as a Human Computer as she could memorise many numbers. She has also made it into Guinness Book of World Records.

Despite India producing such good and Mathematicians, Srinivasa Ramanujan sets himself apart from all of them. Despite Aryabhata being the Father of Mathematics of the country, Srinivasa is the most respected Mathematician. Ramanujan is one of the most notable Mathematicians of India. He was considered to be a prodigy. He has left behind 400 original theorems in a short life span of 32 years. In 1916, he was awarded a BA Degree by research at Cambridge University. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in February 1918 being a, "Research student in Mathematics distinguished as a pure Mathematician particularly for his investigations in elliptic functions and the theory of numbers''. He was also elected for a Trinity College Fellowshipin October 1918.

To mark the contribution of such a great Mathematician, the Indian government declared his birthday as the National Mathematics Day on December 22, 2012.

Having such a legacy behind keeps the pressure to do well for the future Mathematician. Also, a contrary argument has been going around that the Indian students are good at text book Mathematics but not good at solving real world problems. Let’s keep that debate for another day. Mathematics has always been associated with Indians, taking its legacy forward. India will keep producing great Mathematicians who will keep contributing around the globe.

About the Author

Rushikesh Kamde is from Nagpur, Maharashtra. He is a MBA (Marketing) student from MIT-WPU, Pune. He has done BE from Rajiv Gandhi College of Engineering and Research, Nagpur. He has a keen interest in Marketing Analytics.

 

 

 

 

 

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