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Sundararaman Ramanan | |
|---|---|
| Born | Sundararaman Ramanan (1937-07-20)20 July 1937 (age 88) Tiruvannamalai |
| Alma mater | Tata Institute of Fundamental Research,Mumbai;Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda College,Chennai |
| Awards | Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, Srinivasa Ramanujan Medal, TWAS Prize for Mathematics |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Algebraic geometry,moduli spaces,Lie groups |
| Institutions | Chennai Mathematical Institute,ChennaiInstitute of Mathematical Sciences,Chennai |
| Doctoral advisor | MS Narasimhan |
Sundararaman Ramanan (born 20 July 1937) is an Indianmathematician who works in the area ofalgebraic geometry,moduli spaces andLie groups. He is one of India's leading mathematicians and recognised as an expert in algebraic geometry, especially in the area of moduli problems. He has also worked in differential geometry: his joint paper with MS Narasimhan on universal connections has been influential. It enabled SS Chern and B Simons to introduce what is known as the Chern-Simons invariant, which has proved useful in theoretical physics.[1]
He is an alumnus of theRamakrishna Mission School in Chennai and theVivekananda College in Chennai, where he completed a BA Honours in mathematics.[citation needed] He completed his PhD at theTata Institute of Fundamental Research, under the direction ofMS Narasimhan. He did his post-doctoral studies at theUniversity of Oxford,Harvard University andETH Zurich.[citation needed]
He later pursued a career at TIFR. He picked up the methods of modern differential geometry from the French mathematicianJean-Louis Koszul,[2] and later successfully applied it for his research centred on algebraic geometry. He has also made contributions to the topics ofAbelian variety andvector bundles.
He collaborated withRaoul Bott, who was atHarvard University. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard University,University of California at Berkeley, the Institute of Advanced Study inPrinceton,UCLA,University of Oxford,Cambridge University, the Max Planck Institute andUniversity of Paris.[citation needed] In 1978, he gave one of the invited talks at the International Congress of Mathematicians inHelsinki. In 1999, he spoke about some aspects of the work ofAndré Weil on the occasion of his being awarded the Inamouri Prize.[citation needed]
Ramanan discovered and encouragedVijay Kumar Patodi, who proved part of theAtiyah-Singer index theorem, Patodi did his PhD under the combined direction of Narasimhan and Ramanan.[3] Ramanan wasMS Raghunathan's senior colleague and influenced him considerably.[4]
Ramanan wrote the bookModuli of Abelian Varieties with Allan Adler, published by Springer-Verlag, and a graduate-level book on algebraic geometry calledGlobal Calculus, published by the American Mathematical Society.[5] He continues his contributions via teaching and mentoring at theChennai Mathematical Institute,[6] where he is an adjunct professor, and at theInstitute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai.
Ramanan received theShanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, India's highest science prize,[7] in 1979; theTWAS Prize for Mathematics in 2001[8] and the Ramanujan Medal in 2008.[citation needed]
He is married to Anuradha Ramanan, a translator and former librarian. They have two daughters, Sumana Ramanan, a journalist, andKavita Ramanan,[9] a noted mathematician who is a professor of applied mathematics atBrown University inProvidence, Rhode Island.
