D. R. Kaprekar
| Dattathreya Ramchandra Kaprekar | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
17 January 1905 Dahanu, Maharashtra |
| Died | 1986 (aged 80–81) Devlali, Maharashtra |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Occupation | School teacher |
| Known for | Results in recreational mathematics |
Dattathreya Ramchandra Kaprekar (1905–1986) was an Indian recreational mathematician who described several including the Kaprekar, Harshad and Self numbers and discovered the Kaprekar constant, named after him. Despite having no formal postgraduate training and working as a schoolteacher, he published extensively and became well known in recreational mathematics circles.
Kaprekar received his secondary school education in Thane and studied at Fergusson College in Pune. In 1927 he won the Wrangler R. P. Paranjpe Mathematical Prize for an original piece of work in mathematics.
He attended the University of Mumbai, receiving his bachelor's degree in 1929. Having never received any formal postgraduate training, for his entire career (1930–1962) he was a schoolteacher at Nashik in Maharashtra, India. He published extensively, writing about such topics as recurring decimals, magic squares, and integers with special properties. He is also known as "Ganitanand" (गणितानंद)
Working largely alone, Kaprekar discovered a number of results in number theory and described various properties of numbers. In addition to the Kaprekar constant and the Kaprekar numbers which were named after him, he also described self numbers or Devlali numbers, the Harshad numbers and Demlo numbers. He also constructed certain types of magic squares related to the Copernicus magic square. Initially his ideas were not taken seriously by Indian mathematicians, and his results were published largely in low-level mathematics journals or privately published, but international fame arrived when Martin Gardner wrote about Kaprekar in his March 1975 column of Mathematical Games for Scientific American. Today his name is well-known and many other mathematicians have pursued the study of the properties he discovered.
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