Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi
| D. D. Kosambi | |
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| Born | 31 July 1907 Kosben, Portuguese India (present-day Goa, India) |
| Died |
29 June 1966 (aged 58) Pune, Maharashtra, India |
| Occupation | Mathematician and Marxist historian |
| Relatives |
Dharmanand Kosambi (father) Meera Kosambi (daughter) |
Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi (31 July 1907 – 29 June 1966) was an Indian mathematician, statistician, historian and polymath who contributed to genetics by introducing Kosambi's map function. He is well known for his work in numismatics and for compiling critical editions of ancient Sanskrit texts. His father, Dharmananda Damodar Kosambi, had studied ancient Indian texts with a particular emphasis on Buddhism and its literature in the Pali language. Damodar Kosambi emulated him by developing a keen interest in his country's ancient history. Kosambi was also a Marxist historian specialising in ancient India who employed the historical materialist approach in his work. He is particularly known for his classic work An Introduction to the Study of Indian History. He is described as "the patriarch of the Marxist school of Indian historiography". Kosambi was critical of the policies of then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, which, according to him, promoted capitalism in the guise of democratic socialism. He was an enthusiast of the Chinese revolution and its ideals, and, in addition, a leading activist in the World Peace Movement. In the opinion of the historian Irfan Habib, "D. D. Kosambi and R.S. Sharma, together with Daniel Thorner, brought peasants into the study of Indian history for the first time."
After a few years of schooling in India, in 1918, Damodar and his elder sister, Manik travelled to Cambridge, Massachusetts with their father, the eminent Buddhist and Pali scholar, Dharmananda Damodar Kosambi. The latter was tasked by Professor Charles Rockwell Lanman of Harvard University to complete compiling a critical edition of Visuddhimagga, a book on Buddhist philosophy, which was originally started by Henry Clarke Warren. Therethe young Damodar spent a year in a Grammar school and then was admitted to the Cambridge High and Latin School in 1920. He became a member of the Cambridge branch of American Boy Scouts.
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