A Brief History of Indian Math-Magicians

by
Purusottam Sahoo

Introduction
They say history is written by the conqueror, the Geographically, the Indian subcontinent, is a
vanquished are relegated to the ether of time and their southern region and peninsula of Asia, primarily
footprints are effaced by the chariots of the winners. situated on the Indian Plate and projecting southwards
The great Roman Empire, studied so assiduously by into the Indian Ocean from the Himalayas. The Indian
schoolchildren all over the world, fades in comparison subcontinent is related to the land mass that rifted
to the great Mongol empire, which at its peak ruled from Gondwana (the ancient supercontinent that
over a territory five times larger. Our knowledge of our broke up 180 million years ago) and merged with
cultural evolution and our progress over millenniums the Eurasian Plate nearly 55 million years ago. In
has been dictated by the written story; stories that are common parlance, the Indian subcontinent includes all
written by the ascendant forces in existence at the or part of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives,
time of writing. When you convert swords to Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The term "Indian
ploughshares, it is the swords of the losers that are subcontinent" is used interchangeably with the term
beaten into ploughshares. Their stories struggle to be "South Asia".
told over the crescendo of the winner’s cannons. So it
is with their intellectual achievements. One common way of demarcating eras of our history,
is into three separate eras or periods: the Ancient
It has been suggested, and rightly so, that Indian Period (3600 BC - 500 AD), the Middle Ages (500 AD -
contributions to mathematics have not been given due 1500 AD), and the Modern Era (1500 AD - present).
acknowledgement in history. Since the last 2000 years, According to this classification, the eras last hundreds
India and China combined constituted between 40- of years, even thousands of years in the case of the
50% of the world population. Their early and thriving
civilizations gave rise to singular achievements in all
areas of human thought. As a result of odious
Eurocentrism, their many discoveries and
inventions are presently culturally attributed to
their Western counterparts.
Raising awareness of Indian and Arabic mathematics is
all too often tempered with dismissive rejections of
their importance compared to Greek mathematics. The
contributions from the great civilizations of India and
China are perceived either as borrowers from Greek
sources or having made only minor contributions to
mainstream mathematical development.
Indian mathematics emerged in the Indian
subcontinent from 1200 BC until the end of the 18th
century. Since this is a story of mathematicians, let us
then, to be mathematically precise (!) clarify what one
means by “Indian subcontinent”.

P a g e 1 | 17
Ancient Period. The classical period of Indian
mathematics straddled the ancient and middle ages
(400 AD to 1200 AD). During these eras, important
contributions were made by scholars
like Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, Bhaskara II,
and Varāhamihira.
The decimal number system, so commonplace
today, was first recorded in Indian
mathematics. Indian mathematicians made early
contributions to the study of the concept of zero as a
number, negative numbers, arithmetic, and algebra. In
addition, trigonometry was further advanced in India,
and, in particular, the modern definitions
of sine and cosine were developed there. These
mathematical concepts were transmitted to the
Middle East, China, and Europe and led to further
developments that now form the foundations of many
areas of mathematics. Over time, our Indian
subcontinent story became their European story.
Ancient and medieval Indian mathematical works,
originally composed in Sanskrit, usually consisted of a
section of sutras in which a set of rules or problems
were stated with great economy in verse in order to aid
memorization by a student. This was followed by a
second section consisting of a prose commentary
(sometimes multiple commentaries by different
scholars) that explained the problem in more detail
and provided justification for the solution. In the prose
section, the form (and therefore its memorization) was
not considered as important as the ideas involved. All
mathematical works were orally transmitted until
approximately 500 BC; thereafter, they were
transmitted both orally and in manuscript form. The
oldest extant mathematical document produced on
the Indian subcontinent is the birch bark Bakhshali
Manuscript, discovered in 1881 in the village
of Bakhshali, near Peshawar (modern day Pakistan)
and is likely from the 7th century AD. This birch bark
documents the use of “zero” as a place-holder - the
earliest known Indian use of a zero symbol. Like many
gems of Indian origin, this “document” is in British
possession.
A later landmark in Indian mathematics was the
development of the series expansions
for trigonometric functions (sine, cosine, and arc
tangent) by mathematicians of the Kerala school in the
15th century AD. Their remarkable work, completed
two centuries before the invention of calculus in
Europe, provided what is now considered the first
example of a power series (apart from geometric
series).
There is no doubt that the world today is greatly
indebted to the contributions made by Indian
mathematicians. The very foundations of modern
mathematics and the pillars upon which all subsequent
leaps and bounds were made rest upon two key
concepts, both contributions made in the Indian
subcontinent: the introduction of decimal system and
the invention of zero.
As a non-mathematician, I have tried to bring together
some vignettes of famous mathematicians of yore and
now; Indian mathematicians dating back from Indus
Valley civilization and Vedas to Modern times. This is
by no means a scholarly work or a comprehensive or a
complete list of who might be considered “famous”; it
is the author’s selection and any errors and omissions
the dear reader finds, I can only attribute to my
ignorance. Here, then, are their stories and the times
they lived in.
1. 800 BC– 600 BC (world population ~ 75 million)
The great Indus Valley Civilization had begun and
ended almost a thousand years ago, having survived
two thousand years in the midst of the Bronze age. The
Great Pyramid of Giza was completed almost 1350
years ago and the mammoth has been extinct for a
thousand years. A mere 100 years ago the famous Iliad
and the Odyssey were composed. India witnessed the
birth of the “Great Kingdoms”: the sixteen Maha
Janapadas. In short order, The Buddha (563 BC),
Confucius (551 BC) and Mahavira (549) stride the world
as the Magadha Empire rises to dominance.
The two Major Epics of India: There is much scholarly debate
regarding the dates of The Ramayana and The Mahabharata
narration. Estimates range from 7th to 3rd centuries BC extending
up to the 3rd century AD
P a g e 2 | 17
BAUDHĀYANA
The passage of three millennia since Baudhāyana
composed his sutras has induced the fog of antiquity
wherein we are left to interpret very dated texts. His
shrauta sutras comprise a group of Vedic Sanskrit texts
which cover, in addition to Vedic sacrifices, dharma,
daily ritual, mathematics, etc. The Baudhāyana
Śulbasûtra is noted for containing several early
mathematical results, including an approximation of
the square root of 2 and the statement of
the Pythagorean Theorem. In addition, another
problem he tackled rather successfully was to find a
circle whose area is the same as that of a square.
Pythagoras of Samos lived circa 570 BC – 495 BC, a few
decades separating him and our mathematician of
yore, and it is possible that mathematical discoveries in
India made its way to ancient Greece, and perhaps into
Pythagoras’s study group.
His approximation of the square root of 2 is given as:
1 1
√2 ≈ 1 + + + ≈ 1.41426,
3 3.4.34
𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑐ℎ 𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑓𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑚𝑎𝑙𝑠.
2. 300 BC – 200 BC (world population ~ 125 million)
Momentous events were occurring, both in India and
elsewhere. The evolution of the great literary tradition
of South India, specifically, in Tamil arose now.
Although the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt is more
famous, a bigger pyramid began construction in
Mexico, known as the Great Pyramid of Cholula.
Ashoka became the Emperor of the great Mauryan
Empire, his philosophy to spread all over India and
beyond in the centuries to come. This came about
because of the Kalinga war, one of the deadliest in
history, which led to Ashoka adopting Buddhism. The
reason Ashoka attacked Utkala were due to similar
reasons that the British took over India under the
stewardship of the East India Company – lucrative
commerce and wealth. It was during these
tumultuous years that, in the Ancient Period of world
history, that another great Indian mathematician
arose.
ACHARYA PINGALA
To him is attributed the authorship of the
Chandaḥśāstra (also called Pingala-sutras), the earliest
known treatise on Sanskrit prosody.
The Chandaḥśāstra presents the first known
description of a binary numeral system in connection
with the systematic enumeration of meters with fixed
patterns of short and long syllables. The discussion of
the combinatorics of meter corresponds to
the binomial theorem. Halāyudha's commentary
includes a presentation of Pascal's
triangle (called meruprastāra). Pingala's work also
includes material related to the Fibonacci numbers,
called mātrāmeru, knowledge of which was known in
India about 1500 years ago. Use of zero is sometimes
ascribed to Pingala due to his discussion of binary
numbers, usually represented using 0 and 1 in modern
discussion. Pingala used the Sanskrit word śūnya
explicitly to refer to zero and some historians attribute
the discovery of the “zero” to him.
The name of Leonardo of Pisa, also known as Fibonacci (1170-
1250) is attached to the sequence: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8…….in which
the nth term is given as:
Un = Un-1 + Un-2
Pascal's triangle is a triangular array of the binomial coefficients.
In much of the Western world, it is named after the French
mathematician Blaise Pascal, although other mathematicians in
India and elsewhere studied it centuries before him.
In Pascal's triangle, each number is the sum of the two numbers
directly above it.
3. 476 AD – 550 AD (world population ~ 175 million)
Since our last-named mathematician, events were
occurring that would affect our lives now. The Chera
Dynasty, one of the major powers in South India
flourishes. The last Roman emperor is forced to
abdicate and the “Great Roman Empire” begins to
dissolve. Western Europe descend into the “Dark
Ages” a period of demographic, cultural and
intellectual stagnation that will last 1000 years. This
P a g e 3 | 17
period is arbitrarily used to demarcate the transition
from Ancient to Middle Ages. The year 525 AD initiated
the Anno Domini era, used in Gregorian and Julian
calendars, ubiquitous in our daily timekeeping.
Muhammad, the last of the prophets sent by God, will
be born in the year 570 AD.
ARYABHATA
He also gave the formula (a + b)2 = a2 + b2 + 2ab
His works imply that the ratio of the circumference to the
diameter is ((4 + 100) × 8 + 62000)/20000 = 62832/20000
= 3.1416, which is accurate to five significant figures.
Aryabhata or Aryabhata I was the first of the
major mathematician-astronomers from the classical
age of Indian mathematics and Indian astronomy. His
works include the Āryabhaṭīya (which mentions that in
3600 Kaliyuga, 499 AD, he was 23 years old) and
the Arya-siddhanta. He also qualifies as a major early
physicist for his explicit mention of the relativity of
motion.
His major work, Aryabhatiya, a compendium of
mathematics and astronomy, was extensively referred
to in the Indian mathematical literature and has
survived to modern times. The mathematical part of
the Aryabhatiya covers arithmetic, algebra, plane
trigonometry, and spherical trigonometry. It also
contains continued fractions, quadratic equations,
sums-of-power series, and a table of sines.
Aryabhata worked on the approximation for pi (π), and
may have come to the conclusion that π is irrational. If
true, it is quite a sophisticated insight, because the
irrationality of pi (π) was proved in Europe only in 1761
by Lambert, a German mathematician (1728 – 1777).
Aryabhata was the first person to say that the Earth is
spherical and it revolves around the sun. He
discovered the position of nine planets and stated that
these planets revolve around the sun. He also stated
the correct number of days in a year is 365. Further,
he worked on the place value system using letters to
signify numbers and stating qualities.
Aryabhata worked on the place value system using
letters to signify numbers and stating qualities It is
speculated that Aryabhata might have been the head
of the Nalanda University and as well is also reputed to
have set up an observatory at the Sun temple in
Taregana, Bihar.
4. 598 AD – 668 AD (world population ~ 200 million)
Death and destruction are the major events of this time
period. China makes massive invasions into the Korean
peninsula kingdom. The great Teotihuacan buildings in
Mexico are set on fire and is the precursor for the
demise of their civilization and empire. The last great
Roman-Persian war ends in exhaustion on both sides.
Muhammad migrates from Mecca to Medina and dies
in 632 AD. The Dark Ages continue to shroud Europe
in barbarity and intellectual darkness.
BRAHMAGUPTA
He uses 3 as a "practical" value of π, and √10 ≈ 3.1622 as an
"accurate" value of π. The error in this "accurate" value is less
than 1%.
Brahmagupta was a mathematician and astronomer.
He is the author of two early works on mathematics
and astronomy: the Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta (BSS,
"correctly established doctrine of Brahma", dated
628), a theoretical treatise, and the Khaṇḍakhādyaka
("edible bite", dated 665), a more practical text.
The most significant contribution of Brahmagupta was
P a g e 4 | 17
the introduction of zero (0) to mathematics which
stood for “nothing” and was the first to give rules to
compute with zero.
He also explained how to find the cube and cube-root
of an integer and gave rules facilitating the
computation of squares and square roots. He made
numerous early contributions to the understanding of
algebra, arithmetic, geometry, trigonometry and
astronomy.
The significance of giving a practical insight into the
concept of zero cannot be overstated. The entire
edifice of the modern world, our entire civilization
today, would crumble, if not for the use of the zero.
The historian of science George Sarton called him "one
of the greatest scientists of his race and the greatest of
his time. Brahmagupta's mathematical advances were
carried on further by Bhāskara II, a lineal descendant in
Ujjain, who described Brahmagupta as the ganaka-
chakra-chudamani (the gem of the circle of
mathematicians). We can only describe the genius of
Brahmagupta using the words of the great German
philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer thus:
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a
target no one else can see.
5. 600 AD – 680 AD (world population ~ 205 million)
After a reign of 700 years, the Three Kingdoms of Korea
ends. The great empire that influences Europe in the
Middle Ages for 400 years, the Bulgarian Empire, rises
and thrives in the shroud of the Dark ages.
BHĀSKARA
Commonly called Bhaskara I to avoid confusion with
the 12th-century mathematician Bhāskara II, he was a
7th-century mathematician, who was the first to
write numbers in the Hindu decimal system with a
circle for the zero, and who gave a unique and
remarkable rational approximation of
the sine function in his commentary on Aryabhata's
work. His most important mathematical contribution
concerns the representation of numbers in a positional
system. Moreover, Bhaskara stated theorems about
the solutions of today so-called Pell equations. Born in
the district of Mysore, this small town lad grew up to
be the shining star. His contributions are mainly his
proof of the fact that zero stood for ‘nothing’ (the idea
initially introduced by Bhramagupta). He made many
calculations to prove so; division, permutation and
combination theories. He also proved how the earth
appears to be flat even though it’s a sphere.
Bhaskara I's sine approximation formula is a rational expression in
one variable for the computation of the approximate values of
the trigonometric sines. The formula is elegant, simple and
enables one to compute reasonably accurate values of
trigonometric sines without using any geometry whatsoever:
16𝑥(𝜋−𝑥)
sin 𝑥 ≈ , (0 ≤ x ≤ π), with a maximum error of 1.9%
5𝜋 2−4𝑥(𝜋−𝑥)
6 1088 AD – 1173 AD (world population ~ 320
million)
Gunpowder was invented almost 300 years ago in
China, another bastion of inventions. This is the year
the oldest university in Europe is formed – the
University of Bologna in Italy. This is 1500 hundred
years after the oldest university in the world, Nalanda
University was founded.
HEMACHANDRA
His most significant contribution in mathematics was
his initial version of the Fibonacci sequence, some fifty
years before Fibonacci. He was not only a
mathematician but also a scholar, polymath and poet
who wrote on grammar, philosophy and contemporary
history. A prodigious writer, Hemachandra wrote
grammars of Sanskrit and Prakrit, poetry, prosody,
lexicons, texts on science and logic and many branches
P a g e 5 | 17
of Indian philosophy. It is said that Hemachandra
composed 35 million verses in total, many of which are
now lost. Therefore, his contributions are not only
restricted to math but over all the various different
fields that he had mastered over.
7 1114 AD– 1185 AD (world population ~ 320
million)
The oldest University in the UK, Oxford University, is
founded in 1117 and a mere 18 years later, in which an
accidental drowning of a royal child occurred, led to an
18-year civil war in England. The religious reformer,
Hōnen of Japan founds the Buddhist sectarian
movement in 1175. A mere 18 years later, in 1193,
Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khilji sacks and burns the
university at Nalanda which is the beginning of the
decline of Buddhism in India. Shortly thereafter, a
mere score years later, the great Mongol Empire, with
Genghis Kahn at its helm, is established. After a brief
but brutal and world-encompassing attacks and
occupation, the Great Khan will die in 1227.
BHĀSKARA
Also known as Bhāskarācārya ("Bhāskara, the
teacher"), and as Bhāskara II to avoid confusion with
Bhāskara I, was an Indian mathematician and
astronomer. He was born in Bijapur in Karnataka.
Bhāskara and his works represent a significant
contribution to mathematical and astronomical
knowledge in the 12th century. He has been called the
greatest mathematician of medieval India. His main
work Siddhānta-Śiromani, (Sanskrit for "Crown of
Treatises") is divided into four parts called Līlāvatī,
Bījagaṇita, Grahagaṇita and Golādhyāya, which are
also sometimes considered four independent works.
These four sections deal with arithmetic, algebra,
mathematics of the planets, and spheres respectively.
He also wrote another treatise named Karaṇā
Kautūhala. Bhāskara was the one who declared that
any number divided by zero is infinity and that the sum
of any number and infinity is also infinity. He is also
famous for his book “Siddhanta Siromani”.
Bhāskara's work on calculus predates Newton and
Leibniz by over half a millennium. He is particularly
known in the discovery of the principles of differential
calculus and its application to astronomical problems
and computations. While Newton and Leibniz have
been credited with differential and integral calculus,
there is strong evidence to suggest that Bhāskara was
a pioneer in some of the principles of differential
calculus. He was perhaps the first to conceive the
differential coefficient and differential calculus. The
earliest reference to a perpetual motion machine date
back to 1150, when Bhāskara II described a wheel that
he claimed would run forever.
He showed that when a planet is at its farthest from the earth, or
at its closest, the equation of the center (a measure of how far a
planet is from the position in which it is predicted to be, by
assuming it is to move uniformly) vanishes. He therefore concluded
that for some intermediate position the differential of the equation
of the center is equal to zero. In this result, there are traces of the
general mean value theorem, one of the most important theorems
in analysis, which today is usually derived from Rolle's Theorem.
The mean value theorem was later found by Parameshvara in the
15th century in the Lilavati Bhasya, a commentary on Bhaskara's
Lilavati.
P a g e 6 | 17
8. 1325 AD – 1400 AD (?) World population: 350
Million –
The epicenter and capital of the future Aztec Empire is
formed in Tenochtitlan that will last for 2 centuries.
The Ottoman Empire was just founded a quarter
century ago. The hundred-year war between England
and France that actually lasts for 116 years is about to
begin. The Black Death/ Bubonic Plague ravages
Europe and is believed to have wiped out as many as
50% of the population of Europe by its end. It is the
single biggest human catastrophe known in history.
NARAYAṆA PAṆḌITA
Narayana Pandit is known for his most famous work
Ganita Kaumudi on Arithmetic in 1356. It is said that his
texts were the most significant Sanskrit mathematics
treatises after those of Bhaskara II, other than the
Kerala school. He wrote the Ganita Kaumudi (lit.
"Moonlight of mathematics") in 1356 about
mathematical operations. The work anticipated many
developments in combinatorics. He had also written
another algebraic treatise called Bijganita Vatamsa and
is also the author of an elaborate commentary of
Bhaskara II's Lilavati, titled Karmapradipika which
contains seven different methods for squaring
numbers. In his Ganita Kaumudi he gave a rule of
finding integral triangles whose sides differ by one unit
of length and which contain a pair of right-angled
triangles having integral sides with a common integral
height. His other contributions include investigations
into the second order, solutions of indeterminate
higher-order equations and methods of integer
factorization. It is also suggested that Narayana made
minor contributions to the ideas of differential
calculus.
Narayana's cows is an integer sequence which Narayana described
as the number of cows present each year, starting from one cow
in the first year, where every cow has one baby cow each year
starting in its fourth year of life. The first few terms of the
sequence are as follows:
1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 13, 19, …
The ratio of consecutive terms approaches the supergolden ratio,
1.4655712318767680266567312….
9. c. 1340 AD – c. 1425 AD (world population: ~
350 million)
The first modern documented astrarium (also called a
planetarium) clock was completed. Tamerlane
establishes the Timurid Dynasty and will go on to
ravage the Delhi Sultanate; one of many invasions of
Indian Territory by foreign occupiers. A French peasant
girl, who goes by the name of Joan of Arc, offers her
help towards the war effort against England.
MĀDHAVA
Mādhava was an Indian mathematician and
astronomer. He is considered the founder of the
Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics. One of
the greatest mathematician-astronomers of the
Middle Ages, Madhava made pioneering contributions
to the study of infinite series, calculus, trigonometry,
geometry, and algebra. He was the first to use infinite
series approximations for a range of trigonometric
functions, which has been called the "decisive step
onward from the finite procedures of ancient
mathematics to treat their limit-passage to infinity".
His work on infinite series predates that of European
mathematicians by over two centuries. Some scholars
have also suggested that Madhava's work, through the
writings of the Kerala school, was transmitted to
Europe via Jesuit missionaries and traders who were
active around the ancient port of Muziris at the time.
As a result, it may have had an influence on later
European developments in analysis and calculus.
Madhava's work on the value of the mathematical constant π is
cited in the Mahajyānayana prakāra ("Methods for the great
sines"). While some scholars feel that this book may have been
composed by Madhava himself, it is more likely the work of a
16th-century successor. This text gives the following infinite series
expansion of π, now known as the Madhava-Leibniz series:
𝜋 1 1 1
4
= 1− + − +⋯ =
3 5 7
∞
(−1)𝑛−1
∑
2𝑛 − 1
𝑛=1
which he obtained from the power series expansion of the arc-
tangent function. However, what is most impressive is that he also
gave a correction term, Rn, for the error after computing the sum
up to n terms.
P a g e 7 | 17
10 c. 1380 AD – 1460 AD (world population: ~ 350
million)
The year 1380 sees Chaucer writes The Canterbury
Tales which is the precursor to the Modern English
language. A year later, the Bible is translated into
English. From a poor peasant family to a prisoner of
war, Joan of Arc will intersect the great arc of history.
Instrumental in helping turn the war in favor of the
French, she will be tried and executed in 1431, still a
teenager, in British soil as a prisoner of war. It will be
almost 500 years before she will be canonized.
PARAMESHVARA
Vatasseri Parameshvara Nambudiri was a major Indian
mathematician and astronomer of the Kerala school of
astronomy and mathematics founded by Madhava of
Sangamagrama. He was also an astrologer.
Parameshvara was a proponent of observational
astronomy in medieval India and he himself had made
a series of eclipse observations to verify the accuracy
of the computational methods then in use. Based on
his eclipse observations, Parameshvara proposed
several corrections to the astronomical parameters
which had been in use since the times of Aryabhata.
The computational scheme based on the revised set of
parameters has come to be known as the Drgganita or
Drig system.
He was the first mathematician to give the radius, R, of a circle
with an inscribed quadrilateral. The expression is sometimes
attributed to [Lhuilier, 1782], 350 years later. With the sides of the
[cyclic quadrilateral] being a, b, c, and d, the radius R of the
circumscribed circle is:
(𝑎𝑏 + 𝑐𝑑)(𝑎𝑐 + 𝑏𝑑)(𝑎𝑑 + 𝑏𝑐)
𝑅= √
(−𝑎 + 𝑏 + 𝑐 + 𝑑)(𝑎 − 𝑏 + 𝑐 + 𝑑)(𝑎 + 𝑏 − 𝑐 + 𝑑)(𝑎 + 𝑏 + 𝑐 − 𝑑)
11 14th – 16th centuries (world population: 350
million to 500 million)
One of the greatest inventions of the 14th century, the
printing press is invented by Johannes Gutenberg. The
written worl will change the world - irrevocably. The
Byzantine Empire ends as does the 100 year war in
1453. Under Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman
Empire is at the height of its power and rule. The
recently defiled/ denigrated Christopher Columbus
reaches the New World, new to the Europeans. What
is really new is Vasco da Gama’s travels from Portugal
to India by sea. The beginning of the 16th century sees
the beginning of Sikhism by Guru Nanak. Leonardo da
Vinci paints the Mona Lisa and Martin Luther enters St.
Augustine Monastery in Germany in 1505 and begins
his writings on his earth shattering Reformation
articles. Western Christianity will be irrevocably torn
asunder. The feared and revered general, Afonso de
Albuquerque of Portugal conquers Goa in India.
Copernicus proclaims the sun the center of the solar
system. The Mughal Empire will be founded by Babur
in 1526 and will rule India the next 330 years. Akbar
the Great is born in 1542. In 1543, Copernicus
publishes his theory that the Earth and the other
planets revolve around the Sun. The father of modern
physics, Galileo Galilei, is born on February 15, 1564.
In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII issues the Gregorian
calendar. The last day of the Julian calendar was
Thursday, 4 October 1582 and this was followed by the
first day of the Gregorian calendar, Friday, 15 October
1582. Elizabeth I grants a charter to the British East
India Company beginning the English advance in Asia in
1600.
KERALA SCHOOL OF ASTRONOMY AND MATHEMATICS
Instead of a single, singular, individual, India saw an
explosion of scientific inquiry in the southwestern state
of what is now Kerala. So prolific was the yield in pure
and abstract mathematics and astronomy by
numerous individuals that historians refer to this as the
Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics.
Although it appears that original work in mathematics
ceased in much of Northern India after the Islamic
conquests, Banaras survived as a center for
mathematical study, and an important school of
mathematics blossomed in Kerala. The Kerala School
of Astronomy and Mathematics was founded by
Madhava of Sangamagrama (see previous notes),
sometimes called the greatest mathematician-
astronomer of medieval India. Some of his
P a g e 8 | 17
contributions to geometry and algebra and his early Ricci who spent two years in Kochi (Cochin) after being
forms of differentiation and integration for simple ordained in Goa in 1580.
functions may have been transmitted to Europe via
Jesuit missionaries, and it is possible that the later 12. 1800 AD– 1850 AD (world population: 1 billion
European development of calculus was influenced by to 1.2 billion)
his work to some extent. In our historical march ‘till now, we are about to go off
Nilkantha (15th C, Tirur, Kerala) extended and on a tangent. Instead of a single supreme
elaborated upon the results of Madhava while mathematician, we will digress on an astounding
Jyesthadeva (16th C, Kerala) provided detailed proofs achievement made possible by the mathematics of
of the theorems and derivations of the rules contained that time and a mathematician of great talent. Shortly
in the works of Madhava and Nilkantha. It is also after the British, with the aid of the Marathas, defeated
notable that Jyesthadeva’s Yuktibhasa which Tipu Sultan, they set out to map India and the newly
contained commentaries on Nilkantha’s acquired territories.
Tantrasamgraha included elaborations on planetary THE GREAT INDIAN ARC OF THE MERIDIAN
theory later adopted by Tycho Brahe, and mathematics
that anticipated work by later Europeans.
Chitrabhanu (16th C, Kerala) gave integer solutions to
twenty-one types of systems of two algebraic
equations, using both algebraic and geometric
methods in developing his results. Important
discoveries by the Kerala mathematicians included the
Newton-Gauss interpolation formula, the formula for
the sum of an infinite series, and a series notation for
pi (π).
Charles Whish (1835) was one of the first Westerners
to recognize that the Kerala school had anticipated by
almost 300 years many European developments in the
field. He and Hyne – two European mathematicians
obtained their copies of works by the Kerala
mathematicians from Thrissur, and it is not
The Great Trigonometric Survey – it was the most
inconceivable that Jesuit monks may have also taken
ground-breaking and technically complex undertaking
copies to Pisa (where Galileo, Cavalieri and Wallis spent
at that time, the year 1800. Conceived by the elusive
time), or Padau (where James Gregory studied) or Paris
genius William Lambton and brought to its epic ending
(where Mersenne who was in touch with Fermat and
by George Everest, it set out to map the entire length
Pascal, acted as an agent for the transmission of
of the subcontinent to an inch-accuracy over 1600
mathematical ideas). In his illuminating book (The
miles. While the more famous Lewis and Clark of North
Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of
America had yet to set out across the NA continent, our
Mathematics), George Gheverghese Joseph suggests
intrepid individuals set out to measure India, and in the
that Indian mathematical manuscripts may have been
process, measure the precise curvature of the earth.
brought to Europe by Jesuit priests such as Matteo
The scientific world was amazed at that time and hailed
it as “one of the most stupendous works in the whole
P a g e 9 | 17
history of science”. Unlike the “pure” mathematicians protesting against an English magistrate who was
we have been discussing here, we must now introduce beating unfairly an Indian porter. He was articulate
a teenaged “computer” - Radhanath Sikdar. against all types of discrimination. He was opposed to
child marriage and polygamy. He also worked for the
Hired by Everest at a salary of 30 rupees a month, he
re-marriage of widows and the education of women.
was the mathematical star on this 50 year odyssey to
ultimately discover and determine the highest peak in
the world, which would then be named in honor of his
13 1894 AD – 1974 AD (world population ~ 1.6
boss, who had neither seen nor observed, let alone
billion – 4 billion)
climbed his namesake mountain!
X-rays was discovered by German physicist Wilhelm
Using a theodolite, a precision optical instrument for
Roentgen in 1895. The telephone and the electric light
measuring angles between designated visible points in
bulb have been patented by Bell and Edison,
the horizontal and vertical planes, and simple
respectively. In 1903 the Wright brothers fly the first
trigonometry it was applied to mapping the entire
powered plane and travel will never be the same. Two
subcontinent. To achieve the highest possible
World Wars have been fought with uncountable death
accuracy a number of corrections were applied to all
and destruction. In 1905, a little known 26 year old
distances calculated from simple trigonometry: and
patent clerk in Switzerland, who goes by the name of
these included the curvature of the earth, the non-
Albert Einstein, published 4 papers in a German physics
spherical nature of the curvature of the earth, the
journal – the global scientific community is stupefied.
gravitational influence of mountains on pendulums
Humanity’s concept of space and time will change
and plumb lines, refraction and the height above sea
forever. In 1921 he is awarded the Nobel Prize in
level. The mathematical equations involved in its
Physics. In 1947 India gains Independence and the
computation filled volumes and Babu Radhanath
Father of the Nation is assassinated a year later. The
Sikdar’s prodigious talents in calculations were
Father of the “God Particle” will make a splash on the
necessary for the precision required.
world stage dominated by the likes of Einstein, Dirac,
RADHANATH SIKDAR and Curie. In 1969, a human voice from moon
transmits the immortal words “the eagle has landed”.
Radhanath (1813-1870) a mathematician and the
discoverer of Mount Everest, was born in Jorasanko in
Kolkata. Besides his vernacular Bangla, he acquired
proficiency in Sanskrit, English, Greek and Latin. He
studied mathematics with Titler, an authority in
mathematics. In Radhanath Sikdar, Titler found a
mathematical genius and taught him trigonometric
functions. He wrote two important essays: 'Auxiliary
Table' in 1815 and 'The Manual of Surveying'.
The race for space is on.
Radhanath Sikdar was one of the founders of the
Calcutta Art and Craft Society in 1854. Together with SATYENDRA NATH BOSE
Peary Chand Mitra, he edited and published a
Known for his collaboration with Albert Einstein,
magazine called Masik Patrika (the monthly magazine)
Satyendra Nath Bose established modern theoretical
in Bangla for the women of Bengal. Radhanath was a
physics in India. Bose made significant advances in
liberal activist, way ahead of his time in social mores.
statistical mechanics and quantum statistics, the
He was once fined by a court 220 rupees (1843) for
P a g e 10 | 17
description of all forces by single field theory, x-ray
diffraction and the interaction of electromagnetic
waves with the ionosphere. He is best known for his
work on quantum mechanics in the early 1920s,
providing the foundation for Bose–Einstein statistics
and the theory of the Bose–Einstein condensate. In
modern times, Bose is probably the most famous
Indian mathematician, specifically due to his
association with the ingenious Albert Einstein. After
being rejected by an English journal, Bose sent his
mathematical researches to Einstein and this led to the
discovery of the Bose-Einstein condensate
Bose-Einstein statistics: one of two possible ways in which a
collection of indistinguishable particles may occupy a set of
available discrete energy states. The aggregation of particles in the
same state, which is characteristic of particles obeying Bose-
Einstein statistics, accounts for the cohesive streaming of laser
light and the frictionless creeping of superfluid helium. The theory
of this behavior recognized that a collection of identical and
indistinguishable particles can be distributed in this way.
phenomenon. The boson will carry his name in
eternity, and he is recognized as the father of the “God
Particle”.
14 1887 AD – 1920 AD (world population ~ 1.5
billion – 1.8 billion)
In 1876 Queen Victoria becomes Empress of India and
a decade later Burma is presented to her as a “gift”. In
1896 the Olympic Games are revived in Athens. In one
year, 1899-1900, a million Indians will die from
starvation. A decade later New Delhi becomes the
capital of British India. Niels Bohr formulates the first
cohesive model of the atomic nucleus, and in the
process paves the way to quantum mechanics, in 1913.
The Spanish flu, also known as the 1918 flu pandemic,
caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus infected 500
million people–about a third of the world's population
at the time–in four successive waves. The death toll is
typically estimated to have been somewhere between
17 million and 50 million, making it one of the deadliest
pandemics in human history. In 1920 Mahatma Gandhi
launches the Non-cooperation movement.
SRINIVASA RAMANUJAN
Immortalized in numerous books and films, Srinivasa
Ramanujan was one of India’s greatest and highly
celebrated mathematical geniuses. He made
substantial contributions to Hardy-Ramanujan
Littlewood circle method in number theory and
worked on elliptic functions, continued fractions,
partial sums, products of hypergeometric series and
infinite series His important contributions to the field
include Hardy-Ramanujan-Littlewood circle method in
number theory, Roger-Ramanujan’s identities in
partition of numbers, work on algebra of inequalities,
elliptic functions, continued fractions, partial sums and
products of hypergeometric series.
An equation means nothing to me unless it expresses a thought of
God. - - SR
In 1910 Ramanujan found:
∞
1 2√2 (4𝑘)! (1103 + 26390𝑘)
= ∑
𝜋 9801 𝑘!4 3964𝑘
𝑘=0
Though then unproven, Gosper used this equation for the
computation of a then-record 17 million digits of π in 1985—
thereby completing the first proof.
His acquaintance, colleague and co-author of
numerous groundbreaking papers, G.H.
Hardy, summed up his achievement in the following
words: “The limitations of his knowledge were as
startling as its profundity. Here was a man who could
work out modular equations and theorems…to orders
unheard of, whose mastery of continued fraction was…
beyond that of any mathematician in the world, who
had found for himself the functional equation of zeta
function and the dominant terms of many of the most
famous problems in analytical theory of numbers; and
P a g e 11 | 17
yet he had never heard of a doubly periodic function or comparison between two data sets that is now known
of Cauchy’s theorem, and had indeed but the vaguest as the Mahalanobis distance. He introduced innovative
idea of what a function of complex variable was…” techniques for conducting large-scale sample surveys
He made in depth analysis in order to solve various and calculated acreages and crop yields by using the
mathematical problems by bringing to light new and method of random sampling. . Besides these, he had
novel ideas that gave impetus to the progress of game also made pioneering studies in the field of
theory. Such was his mathematical genius that he
anthropometry. He devised a statistical method called
discovered his own theorems. After World War I,
fractile graphical analysis, which could be used to
which began when he was at Cambridge, ended and it
was safe to travel, he returned to India, now very sick
but still doing mathematics. On April 26, 1920, at the
age of 32, and three days after the last entry in his
famous notebook, he died.

15 1893 AD– 1972 AD (world population ~ 1.6

billion – 3.8 billion)
Two world wars have been fought and ended with
gargantuan death and destruction. A “half-naked
compare the socioeconomic conditions of different
fakir”, who goes by the unassuming name of MKG,
groups of people. He also applied statistics to
strides the Indian subcontinent and his footsteps echo
economic planning for flood control. He also
all over the world. The fakir will go on to become a folk
hero in his own lifetime. A fellow Hindu will silence The Mahalanobis distance measures distance relative to the
that voice of humanity in 1958. A year later another centroid — a base or central point which can be thought of as an
overall mean for multivariate data. The centroid is a point in
man of conscience, The Dalai Lama, will be forced to multivariate space where all means from all variables intersect.
flee to India from Tibet. Two years later, an The larger the MD, the further away from the centroid the data
experiment in communism by China ends with the point is.
The most common use for the Mahalanobis distance is to find
death of 20 million people. A year later the first Indo- multivariate outliers, which indicates unusual combinations of two
China breaks out. The reason for that conflict endures or more variables. For example, it’s fairly common to find a 6′ tall
to this day. Three years later India fights a war on the woman weighing 85 Kg, but it’s rare to find a 4′ tall woman who
weighs that much.
Western front against Pakistan. Six years later, in 1971,
they fight another war, on the Eastern Front, for the
birth of Bangladesh.
P.C. MAHALANOBIS
Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis is the founder of Indian
Statistical Institute as well as the National Sample
Surveys for which he gained international recognition.
He graduated from university of Cambridge in physics
and mathematics. Popular for his work in discovering contributed to the design of large scale sample surveys
the D2 statistics (used for divergence based groupings). in India.
Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis’s most significant
contribution in the field of statistics was the
Mahalanobis Distance. He devised a measure of
P a g e 12 | 17
16. 1905 AD – 1986 AD (world population ~ 1.6
billion – 4.9 billion)
1976 saw the first outbreak of the Ebola Virus; the
same year that sees the birth of the Apple Computer.
Massive computations by the masses will become
commonplace. Indian Prime minister Indira Gandhi is
assassinated by her own bodyguards in 1984. Riots
break out and as it so often happens, many innocent
people paid with their lives as collateral damage. Her
son, Prime minister at the time, will meet a similar fate
a mere 7 years later.
D. R. KAPREKAR
Dattaraya Ramchandra Kaprekar was an Indian
recreational mathematician who described several
classes of natural numbers including the Kaprekar,
Harshad and self-numbers and discovered the
Kaprekar constant, named after him. Without any
formal mathematical education he published
extensively and was very well known in recreational
mathematics circles. Working largely alone, Kaprekar
discovered a number of results in number theory and
described various properties of numbers. In addition to
the Kaprekar's 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.
6174 is known as the Kaprekar’s Constant.
This number is known for the following rule:
Take any four-digit number (at least two digits should be different)
Arrange the digits in descending and ascending order to get two
new four-digit numbers
- Now, subtract the smaller number from the bigger number
- Go back to step 2 and repeat
For example, let’s take the number 5432.
5432 – 2345 = 3087
8730 – 0378 = 8352
8532 – 2358 = 6174
Now, let’s follow the same method with another four-digit
number, say, 2005.
5200 - 0025 = 5175
7551 - 1557 = 5994
9954 - 4599 = 5355
5553 - 3555 = 1998
9981 - 1899 = 8082
8820 - 0288 = 8532
8532 - 2358 = 6174
7641 - 1467 = 6174
This process is called Kaprekar's routine and it states that you'll
always reach number 6174 in at most 7 iterations and once you
reach 6174, the process will continue generating the same
number.
However, international fame arrived when Martin
Gardner, a well-known popularizer of recreational
mathematics, 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.
17. 1920 AD – 2013 AD (world population ~ 1.6 billion
– 7.2 billion)
Our next famous mathematician straddled two
centuries, contemporaneous for some time with our
other two famous mathematicians. He had lived
through tumultuous times in Indian History, having
witnessed the rise and death of the most famous
Indian, the Mahatma Gandhi. The birth of the World
Wide Web in 1990 will forever change exchange of
information around the globe. In 1996, Dolly the sheep
becomes the first successful cloned mammal. Two
P a g e 13 | 17
college students form a company with the strange
name of Google. Two and a half millennia ago, in the
Vedic literature, one finds numbers much larger than
the one (googolplex) that inspired this company name.
C.R. RAO
The Fisher–Rao distance is a measure of dissimilarity between
probability distributions, which, under certain regularity
conditions of the statistical model, is up to a scaling factor the
unique Riemannian metric invariant under Markov morphisms. It
is related to the Shannon entropy and has been used to enlarge
the perspective of analysis in a wide variety of domains such as
image processing, radar systems, and morphological classification.
This came about when Mahalanobis asked CR Rao to make a
cluster analysis of different castes and tribes in an Indian State
using a measure of distance between two populations.
Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao, popularly known as C R
Rao, is a well-known statistician, famous for his “theory
of estimation”. He achieved his masters in
mathematics from Andhra University after which he
graduated in statistics from Calcutta University
His contributions to statistical theory and applications
are well known, and many of his results, which bear his
name, are included in the curriculum of courses in
statistics at bachelor’s and master’s level all over the
world. Upon being rejected for a job in then Calcutta,
he applied for and obtained a position at the newly
founded ISI (by none other than PCM, discussed
earlier). Among his best-known discoveries are
the Cramér–Rao bound and the Rao–Blackwell
theorem both related to the quality of estimators.
In statistics, an estimator is a rule for calculating an
estimate of a given quantity based on observed data:
thus the rule (the estimator), the quantity of interest
(the estimand) and its result (the estimate) are
distinguished. Other areas he worked in
include multivariate analysis, estimation theory,
and differential geometry. His other contributions
include the Fisher–Rao theorem, Rao distance, and
orthogonal arrays.
18. 1923 AD – 1983 AD (world population ~ 1.6
billion – 4.7 billion)
HARISH CHANDRA
While CR Rao was garnering fame and awards and
accolades all over the world, Harish Chandra, who
began his career as a student under Paul Dirac at
Harish Chandra also formulated a fundamental theory of
representations of the Lie groups and Lie algebras. He had even
extended the special concept of a characteristic representation of
the finite – dimensional of a semi simple Lie groups to the infinite-
dimensional representations of a special case and also formulated
a Weyl’s character formula analogue. Some of his other great
contributions are the specific determination of Plancherel
measure for the semisimple groups, the great evaluation of the
representations of the discrete series, based on all the results of
the Eisenstein series
P a g e 14 | 17
Cambridge, became interested in mathematics, saying
“I did not have the mysterious sixth sense which one
needs in order to succeed in physics and I soon decided
to move over to mathematics”. While the British
Empire was crumbling in India, he was in the process of
obtaining his Ph.D. While at Cambridge, he attended
lectures by Wolfgang Pauli, and during one of them
pointed out a mistake in Pauli's work. The two were to
become lifelong friends. During this time, he became
increasingly interested in mathematics. Harish
Chandra is famously known for infinite dimensional
group representation theory, especially harmonic
analysis on semi simple Lie groups. He made various
contributions throughout his lifetime and be awarded
with the Cole prize by the American mathematical
society.
19. 1932 AD– 2020 AD (world population ~ 2 billion
– 7.8 billion)
Gujarat attracts death and destruction; an earthquake
in 2001 that leaves more than 20,000 dead followed a
year later by riots and mass killings in 2002. Between
these two events, the iPod is introduced to the masses
and listening to music will forever be changed. A billion
faces can now be viewed, in 2004, from the privacy of
your computer on Facebook; and a year later a billion
videos can be viewed on YouTube. The infamous
Mumbai terrorist attacks of 2008 will live in infamy.
Apple continues its technological advance with the
disruptive introduction of the iPhone and then the
iPad. India revokes the special status of Jammu and
Kashmir in 2019. 2020 will forever be remembered for
the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to global social
and economic disruption including a major economic
recession. When history is written, it will find no
winners.
C. S. SESHADRI
He graduated from Madras University in mathematics
and studied further to gain his PhD from Bombay
University. His main contributions are in algebraic
geometry. Seshadri was widely considered a leader in
algebraic geometry — an area in which he continued
to make breakthroughs throughout his life. His
research on unitary vector bundles, the Narasimhan-
Seshadri theorem, Geometric Invariant Theory, and
Schubert varieties are considered to be some of the
most influential work in the field. Seshadri’s deep
insights and significant accomplishments have greatly
contributed to shaping India as a major center for
mathematics in the post-independence era,
particularly in the field of algebraic geometry. Another
topic that he virtually engendered is the so-called
standard monomial theory. His work in establishing the
Chennai Mathematical Institute (CMI), literally brick by
brick, is as noteworthy as his scientific pursuits. Along
with his contributions in geometry he also invented the
Seshadri constant and the Naraisham-Seshadri
Algebraic geometry is a branch of mathematics, classically
studying zeros of multivariate polynomials. Modern algebraic
geometry is based on the use of abstract algebraic techniques,
mainly from commutative algebra, for solving geometrical
problems about these sets of zeros. This Togliatti
surface is an algebraic surface of degree
five. The picture represents a portion of its real locus.
constant.
20. 1938 AD – 1974 AD (world population ~ 2
billion – 4 billion)
C. P. RAMANUJAM
Bracketed by our famous mathematician Seshadri, C. P.
Ramanujam’s life could in some ways be compared to
that other genius, John Nash, who said, ““I would not
P a g e 15 | 17
dare to say that there is a direct relation between NARENDRA KARMARKAR
mathematics and madness, but there is no doubt that
great mathematicians suffer from maniacal
characteristics, delirium and symptoms of
schizophrenia.”

Besides his passion in the field of mathematics he also

enjoyed spending his leisure time listening to music.
This brilliant mind achieved the power of knowledge
and worked in the fields of number theory and
algebraic geometry. He was eventually elected a fellow
of Indian Academy of Sciences. Often confused with
Srinivasa Ramanujan, C.P. Ramanujam was an equally
gifted mathematician known for his work on algebraic
number theory and geometry. Like his namesake
Srinivasa Ramanujan, Ramanujam also had a very short
life. Late one evening on 27 October 1974, after a lively
discussion with a visiting foreign professor he took his
life with an overdose of barbiturates. It is indeed
remarkable that two of India’s greatest
mathematicians — Ramanujam and Ramanujan (who
passed away aged 32) — died so young, and yet left
such an enduring legacy in their discipline.
Number theory (or arithmetic or higher arithmetic in older usage)
is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of
the integers and integer-valued functions. German mathematician
Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) said, "Mathematics is the queen
of the sciences—and number theory is the queen of
mathematics." Number theorists study prime numbers as well as
the properties of objects made out of integers (for example,
rational numbers).
Narendra Karmarkar is known for his Karmarkar’s
algorithm. The word algorithm itself is derived from
the 9th-century Persian mathematician Muḥammad
ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, Latinized Algoritmi. Algorithms
are nothing new. They are simply mathematical
instructions. Their use in computers can be traced back
to one of the giants in computational theory, Alan
Turing. Back in 1952, Turing “published a set of
equations that tried to explain the patterns we see in
nature, from the dappled stripes adorning the back of
a zebra to the whorled leaves on a plant stem, or even
the complex tucking and folding that turns a ball of
cells into an organism”.
Karmarkar graduated from IIT Bombay in electrical
engineering and went ahead to proceed with his
studies in the U.S. to gain his PhD. He is best known for
his work in inventing polynomial algorithms for linear
programming. This fine mind created an overlap
between international technology and mathematics to
give birth to algorithms. This algorithm is a
cornerstone in the field of Linear Programming. He
published his famous result in 1984 while he was
working for Bell Laboratories in New Jersey.

21. 1955 AD - (world population ~ 7.8 billion)

We have reached the end of our brief journey into the
past, and the present, of a few individuals who opened
our eyes to the beauty of mathematics. This brings us
to our last and only living hero.

P a g e 16 | 17
Epilogue
I hope you have enjoyed taking this walk some of our
forefathers; a journey through ingenious minds and
discoveries. Mathematics is defined as “the study of
relationships among quantities, magnitudes and
properties, and also of the logical operations by which
unknown quantities, magnitudes, and properties may
be deduced” (according to Microsoft Encarta
Encyclopedia) or “the study of quantity, structure,
space and change” (Wikipedia).
Prior to the early era of the Modern Era, it was
regarded as the science of quantity, whether of
magnitudes (as in geometry) or of numbers (as in
arithmetic) or of the generalization of these two fields
(as in algebra). Some tend to see it in terms as simple
as a search for patterns. During the 19th Century,
however, mathematics broadened to encompass
mathematical or symbolic logic, and thus came to be
regarded increasingly as the science of relations.
The discipline of mathematics now covers – in addition
to the standard fields of number theory, algebra,
geometry, analysis (calculus), mathematical logic and
set theory, and more applied mathematics such as
probability theory and statistics – a bewildering array
of specialized areas and fields of study, including group
theory, order theory, knot theory, sheaf theory,
topology, differential geometry, fractal geometry,
graph theory, functional analysis, complex analysis,
singularity theory, catastrophe theory, chaos theory,
measure theory, model theory, category theory,
control theory, game theory, complexity theory and
many more.
Acknowledgements
This endeavor was a family love affair.
The author is forever indebted to his father, Balarama
Sahoo, a famous Chemist in his days as a professor at
I.I.T Kharagpur and a prolific writer for inculcating in
me a love of mathematics since childhood. He
continues to inspire countless children in his
retirement in Odisha. I have, however feebly, tried to
carry on the family tradition with my own son, Joshua
Rakesh, who knows more mathematics than I will ever
understand.
To my mother, Nishamani, who has always encouraged
me to follow the unbeaten path and fortified me with
food for thought.
My sister Minoti Sahu, a bright engineer, who proof-
reads all my scribblings, reviewed this manuscript in its
draft form.
Our dear family friend, Jagruti Sarkar, part of my focus
group, who proposed the title to this article.
Lastly, but certainly not the least, I owe a debt of
gratitude to my lovely and patient wife, Laureen, who
makes sure that my writings in my second language are
not afflicted with vernacularisms.
The reader is encouraged to email the author
(psahoo0077@gmail.com) with any error or omissions
they have detected.
P a g e 17 | 17