Mudumbai Seshachulu Narasimhan, a towering determine in Indian science, handed away on May 15 in Bangalore; he would have turned 89 on June 7.
He was a world-renowned mathematician of extraordinary breadth and depth, who made elementary contributions to numerous fields in arithmetic corresponding to algebraic geometry, differential geometry, illustration idea and partial differential equations.
Born in 1932 in a household of agriculturalists in Tandarai village in northern Tamil Nadu, Narasimhan had a eager curiosity in arithmetic from his faculty days. In an interview with mathematician Sujatha Ramdorai for Asia Pacific Mathematics Newsletter, he stated that when he was 12, he was fascinated by Euclid and fixing “riders,” considering for oneself.
When requested concerning the moments he cherished in his life, his reply was: “The best moments, I think, were the times I spent as a student with Father Racine, K. Chandrasekharan and L Schwartz, which shaped my approach to mathematics and my mathematics career.”
In Loyola College, Chennai, Father Racine, a Jesuit priest and a pupil of Elie Cartan, seen the expertise of younger Narasimhan and requested him to take up greater research in arithmetic at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai, the place a college of arithmetic had simply been based by Okay. Chandrasekharan.
Narasimhan went to TIFR for his PhD in 1953 and amongst his co-students was C.S. Seshadri, with whom he went on to collaborate carefully. Narasimhan and Seshadri shot to fame in 1965 with the publication of the Narasimhan-Seshadri theorem, which makes a deep and sudden connection between two totally different areas of recent arithmetic. This and the Harder-Narasimhan filtration (which was found later with German mathematician G. Harder) have been generalised and stand as elementary examples of paradigms with broad applicability.
Narasimhan and Seshadri continued to be good buddies, and the previous was an ideal help when Seshadri established the Chennai Mathematical Institute.
One of Narasimhan’s PhD college students and mathematician at Chennai Mathematical Institute, Prof. T. R. Ramadas, says in an article in Current Science, “Mathematical theorems are rarely described as discoveries. When they were barely 30 years old, Narasimhan and Seshadri made a remarkable discovery at the cross roads of Algebraic Geometry and Complex Analytic Geometry of that era.”
Prof. Ramadas joined TIFR to do a PhD in physics and he describes how he crossed over to arithmetic within the article. Following a collection of lectures given by Narasimhan on vector bundles, connections and attribute lessons, Prof. Ramadas, who was a note-taker, ended up in discussions with the previous.
“Over the next two years, I reported to Narasimhan my attempts to understand Gauge Theories … and Dirac’s theory of constrained systems. Then, I watched in awe as he laid bare the geometry underlying the theory, in work that became the body of my thesis,” says Prof. Ramadas.
Many of Narasimhan’s college students acquired renown within the area — they embrace S. Ramanan, M. S. Raghunathan, V. Okay. Patodi and R. Parthasarathy.
Lingering recommendation
In his article, Prof. Ramadas mentions that although Narasimhan was spare with recommendation, a few of his aphorisms and recommendation continued to linger. Some of that is paraphrased right here: (1) While studying new arithmetic, don’t spend an excessive amount of effort on arduous workout routines; save your power for analysis issues. (2) Understand easy instances first. (3) Learn and take into consideration any piece of arithmetic from essentially the most superior/refined standpoint you’re able to. (4) Administration is necessary. (5) You have been helped by those that went earlier than, so you need to assist those that come after. (6) In the start of the workday, sit and do some comparatively concrete arithmetic – say compute a homotopy group – even when your work goes nowhere. If you’re fortunate sufficient to be within the midst of a challenge with its personal momentum, contrive to finish the day with a concrete process programmed for the following day.
Narasimhan was with the arithmetic division at TIFR for the big a part of his profession. From 1992-1999, he was head of the Mathematics group on the International Centre for Theoretical Physics at Trieste, Italy, after which moved to Bangalore, the place he resided. He received the S.S. Bhatnagar prize in 1975, Third World Academy award for arithmetic in 1987, Padma Bhushan in 1990, Fellow of the Royal Society and King Faisal International Prize for Science in 2006 (collectively with Simon Donaldson, Imperial College).
Narasimhan was married to Sakuntala Narasimhan, a musician, journalist and client advocate. Their daughter and physicist Shobhana Narasimhan is at JNCASR, Bengaluru, and son Mohan is a administration skilled in Bengaluru.
