Chakravarthi Padmanabhan Ramanujam (1938 – 1974) was an Indian mathematician who worked in the fields of number theory and algebraic geometry.
He was elected a fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 1973.
Born on 9th January 1938 in Madras to Chakravarthi Srinivasa Padmanabhan, C. P. Ramanujam was the eldest of the seven children.
Ramanujam finished his schooling from Madras and joined Loyola College there in the year 1952 with specialization in mathematics. During this time, he was encouraged by Father Racine, a missionary who became his teacher and friend.
Under his encouragement and recommendation, Ramanujam applied to the graduate school in the TATA Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Bombay and was admitted to TIFR.
In his letter of recommendation, Father Racine wrote:-
He has certainly originality of mind and the type of curiosity which is likely to suggest that he will develop into a good research worker if
given sufficient opportunity.
Ramanujam set out for Mumbai to pursue his interest in mathematics. He and his school mate Raghavan Narasimhm and S. Ramanan joined TIFR. During that time, there was a tradition for some graduate students to write up the notes of each course of lectures.
During that time, he showed great efforts and interest in using his analytical mind to create notes and information. His doctoral advisor, K. G. Ramanathan stated that Ramanujam displayed versatility and depth in mathematics during his two years of stay there.
This led his guide to suggest him to begin working on a problem relating to the work of the great German number theorist C. L. Siegel.
His insight and knowledge finally bore fruit and he solved the long outstanding problem relating to the work of the great German number theorist C. L. Siegel. He then took up Waring’s problem in algebraic number fields and got interesting results. In recognition of his work and his contribution to the Number Theory, the Institute promoted him as the associate professor.
He then wrote his thesis in the year 1966 and took his doctoral examination in the year 1967. Ramanujam also started teaching himself Garman, Italian, Russian and French so that he could study mathematical works in their original form.
Indian mathematicians Ramanujan had the capability to motivate people easily with his passion for mathematics and he used to freely give time and knowledge to whoever sought of him. Ramanujam also had interest in music and games.
In between the years 1964 and 1968, he was making great strides in Number theory and his contacts with Shafarevich and Mumford led him on to Algebraic Geometry. In the year 1964, based on his participation in the International Colloquium on Differential Analysis, he earned the respect of Grothendieck and Mumford who invited him to Paris and Harvard.
Ramanujam accepted the invitation and was in Paris for a brief period. However, due to overwork he suffered from illness. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia in the year 1964 and with severe depression and later left Paris for Chennai.
He then resigned from his post in Mumbai in the year 1965 after a bout of illness and secured a tenured position as a professor in Chandigarh in Punjab.
However TIFR was his real home and he was back there again on June 1965. In the year 1970 again, Ramanujam sent his resignation to TIFR but the institute would not take it seriously.
During this time, Mumford invited Ramanujam, to University of Warwick as a visiting professor during the Algebraic Geometry year. Ramanujam also had a short tenure in Turin which he widely appreciated and accepted. Ramanujam was elected a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in the year 1973.
After he was back in India after his year at the University of Warwick, Ramanujam requested for a professorship in the Tata Institute but to make tenable in their Bangalore campus. Ramanujam was then put on charge of a new branch dealing with applied mathematics in Bangalore.
Later then in one evening on 27th October 1974, after a lively discussion with a visiting foreign professor Ramanujam took his life with an overdose of barbiturates. Ramanujam was barely thirty seven during his death.
Like his namesake Srinivasa Ramanujan, Ramanujam also had a very short life.
As David Mumford put it, Ramanujam felt that the spirit of mathematics demanded of him not merely routine developments but the right theorem on any given topic. “He wanted mathematics to be beautiful and to be clear and simple. He was sometimes tormented by the difficulty of these high standards, but in retrospect, it is clear to us how often he succeeded in adding to our knowledge, results both new, beautiful and with a genuinely original stamp“.[2]
Source: https://www.indiaonline.in/
Here is the INTERESTING PART…
Do you remember this book I bought a few weeks ago?
Ramanujam’s father was C S Padmanabhan who was an advocate working in Madras, (now Chennai) India, at the High Court. C P Ramanujam was educated in Madras, first at Ewart’s School and then at the Sir M Ct Muthiah Chetty High School at Vepery, Madras. In 1952, while still only 14 years old, he passed his final High School examinations and entered Loyola College in Madras. He was awarded a B.A. with Honours in Mathematics in 1957.
Would it then be reasonable to guess that C.P.Ramanujam bought this book around 1953 in his forming years while studying at Loyola college?
Even the Vepery schools match to his notes (Home?) address from where he should have attended the schools and college?!
If the book was indeed C.P.Ramanujam’s, how interesting/cool is that to know a brilliant mind once turned the pages of the book and (possibly) inspired doing so.
Who knows who all read this copy, where all it was shelved, and now (after 70 years) reached my hands?!
What do you think?!!!
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