C. P. Ramanujam
| C. P. Ramanujam | |
|---|---|
| Born | 9 January 1938 Madras, Madras Presidency, British India |
| Died | 27 October 1974 (age 36) Bangalore, India |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | Tata Institute of Fundamental Research |
| Alma mater | Tata Institute of Fundamental Research |
| Doctoral advisor | K. G. Ramanathan |
| Notable awards | Fellow, Indian Academy of Sciences |
Chakravarthi Padmanabhan Ramanujam (9 January 1938 – 27 October 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.
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".
Ramanujam was born to a Tamil family on 9 January 1938 in Madras (now Chennai), India, as the eldest of seven, to Chakravarthi Srinivasa Padmanabhan. He finished his schooling and joined Loyola College in Madras in 1952. He wanted to specialise in mathematics and he set out to master it with vigour and passion. He also enjoyed music and his favourite musician was Dr. M. D. Ramanathan, a maverick concert musician. His teacher and friend at this time was Father Racine, a missionary who had obtained his doctorate under the supervision of Élie Cartan. With Father Racine's encouragement and recommendation, Ramanujam applied to the graduate school at the TATA Institute of Fundamental Research in Bombay and admitted to TIFR. His father had wanted him to join the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta as he had passed the entrance exam meritoriously.
Ramanujam set out for Mumbai at the age of eighteen to pursue his interest in mathematics. He and his friend and schoolmate Raghavan Narasimhan, and S. Ramanan joined TIFR together in 1957. At the Tata Institute there was a stream of first rate visiting mathematicians from all over the world. It was a tradition for some graduate student to write up the notes of each course of lectures. Accordingly, Ramanujam wrote up in his first year, the notes of Max Deuring's lectures on Algebraic functions of one variable. It was a nontrivial effort and the notes were written clearly and were well received. The analytical mind was much in evidence in this effort as he could simplify and extend the notes within a short time period. "He could reduce difficult solutions to be simple and elegant due to his deep knowledge of the subject matter" states Ramanan. "Max Deuring's lectures gave him a taste for Algebraic Number Theory. He studied not only algebraic geometry and analytic number theory of which he displayed a deep knowledge but he became an expert in several other allied subjects as well".
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