Letter of Motivation

Respected Sir/Madam,

My name is Siva, I am a BSc Mathematics graduate from Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore,
India. I am applying to the University of Bonn for the Master’s program in Mathematics. My main
interest is in the field of Algebraic Geometry and Commutative Algebra. My Bachelor's degree did an
incredible job in strengthening my foundations as well as paving the way to understand advanced
concepts of Algebra, Analysis, Topology, Combinatorics & Discrete Mathematics, Differential
Equations, and other areas of mathematics. Hence, I would like to pursue my Ph.D in Algebraic
Geometry.

I always had a knack of understanding abstract concepts; in high school, I attended a seminar by
professor R. Ramanujan in "Geometry and Algebra" at IMSC (Institute of Mathematical Sciences,
Chennai). There he made the following statement "Science is wide, algebra is a sink point in which
finally most of the concepts of science and math fall into". This kindled my curiosity about algebra. I
started reading "Linear Algebra" by Kenneth Hoffman and then "Topics in Algebra" by I.N. Herstein.
Aside from pure mathematics, Algorithms, Complexity theory, Automata Theory and Data Science are a
few domains in Theoretical Computer Science that also fascinate me.

During my undergrad days, I got the opportunity to head the mathematics club of my university through
which I actively worked to propagate pure mathematics among the student body. I gave lectures on Lie
Algebra, Representation Theory, and Combinatorics in Computer Science, Theoretical Machine
Learning, and Image Processing. It was also at this time that I implemented my plan of rigorous self-
study -outside of the classroom- to hone the skills required for mathematical research.

When I got introduced to the area of Module Theory, I came across quite a few open problems. In
particular, I looked into the "Jacobson Conjecture" which states "For a ring R with Jacobson radical J,
the only element of a Noetherian ring in all powers of J is 0." At first glance the statement of this
conjecture seems much intuitive and comes with a lot of insightful examples too, however, later I
realized the intricacies behind it: in my quest of finding a counterexample, I must admit that I was
indeed unsuccessful. During the summer of my freshman year, I interned at CEBS (Center for
Excellence in Basic Sciences, Mumbai) under Dr. Balwant Singh, who guided and motivated me to
understand the proceedings of this conjecture through some established works by IN Herstien,
Jategaonkar, Arun Vinayak and Lenagan T. H.

In my sophomore year, I worked with Dr. K. Somasundaram, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham,

Coimbatore, on the "Permanent Dominance conjecture" in the area of multilinear algebra where I got the
chance to refer to top-notch research publications and journals that dealt with intriguing ways of solving
this problem for specific cases. While searching for examples related to matrix inequalities using
determinent’s and permanent’s I came across the book "Matrices and Graphs" by Dr. R.B. Bapat. The
“Erdos-Faber-Lovasz Conjecture" and the "Total Coloring Conjecture” in this book caught my attention
at once. I did a reading project on the "Total Chromatic Number for Some Classes of Cayley Graphs”
under J. Geetha and K. Somasundaram which aims to solve the Total Coloring conjecture for Cayley
graphs using an algebraic approach.
Recently I had an opportunity to be a Research Intern at IIT-Madras in the Department of Computer
Science under Professor Arun Rajkumar where I worked on the Structural classification of algebraic
tournaments. I had an opportunity to extend the work of Professor Arun Rajkumar who classified
tournaments of rank-2. I am glad to mention that our results are under review for publication.

My Bachelor thesis explains the "Kaplansky Conjecture" on Group Rings. In this regard, I am working
with Dr. S. Santhakumar to extend the research of Zahra Taheri and Alireza Abdollahi on the zero
divisor conjecture which remains unsolved. I am aiming to extend the result of Zahra and Aliereza to
rings of prime support size, who proved for rings of support size 3.

The covid-19 pandemic was undoubtedly a new (and challenging) situation that brought a lot of change
in the formal teaching-learning process, yet I utilized this circumstance in the best possible way by
taking part in many online seminars from premier mathematical institutes in India and across the world.
This encouraged me to keep going despite the tough times.

I believe that I will have much wider scope for research and learning in University of Bonn than in
India. The Department of Mathematics at University of Bonn boasts of several Field Medalists and other
notable prize-winners. Therefore, it would be extremely gratifying to share the same bench. With almost
two centuries of unparalleled and rich contributions to Pure Mathematics, this pinnacle of an institute
provides the ideal environment to remain constantly ignited for mathematical contributions. It excites
me that algebraic geometry research group is one of the best in world.

I am applying to University of Bonn because of its strong Algebraic geometry, Number theory, and
Commutative algebra research groups. More importantly, the current research topics of some department
members immediately interest me. The works of Professors Peter Scholze, Michael Rapoport, and
Andreas Mihatsch inspired me to apply to the University of Bonn. My interest in Algebraic geometry
rose up by reading Joe Harris book on Algebraic geometry. Especially the ideal Varieties, irreducible
decomposition, and Nullstellensatz is where I started liking the abstractness of the subject.

For my doctoral studies, I would like to further my knowledge on Algebraic Geometry and
Commutative Algebra, which I started studying during my undergraduate program. I aspire to continue
my research under the supervision of Professor Joe Harris. Especially I would like to work on some
open problems such as the MNOP conjecture, Tate's conjecture, Virasoro conjecture. I would also like to
extend further my work on Jacobson's conjecture. In general, I hope to get an in-depth understanding of
algebraic geometry, elliptic curves, modular forms, and homological algebra at the graduate school of
Harvard. 

As an enthusiastic student with utmost dedication and determination, I seek to apply for a masters at
University of Bonn because I firmly believe that it would lead me in the right direction to enter and
grow in the field of academia. With the ultimate goal of becoming a good researcher of mathematics,
given such an opportunity, I have all faith that I would thrive and contribute back to the department and
community to the best of my ability.

Yours Faithfully

Siva S