S. Ramanan

S (Sundararaman) Ramanan (born 20 July 1937) is an Indian mathematician who works in the area of algebraic geometry, moduli spaces and Lie 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]

S Ramanan
Born	Sundararaman Ramanan 20 July 1937 Tiruvannamalai
Nationality	India
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, Chennai Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai
Doctoral advisor	MS Narasimhan

Education and Career

He is an alumnus of the Ramakrishna Mission School in Chennai and the Vivekananda College in Chennai, where he completed a BA Honours in mathematics. He completed his PhD at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, under the direction of MS Narasimhan. He did his post-doctoral studies at Oxford University, Harvard University and ETH Zurich.

He later pursued a career at TIFR. He picked up the methods of modern differential geometry from the French mathematician Jean-Louis Koszul,[2] and later successfully applied it for his research centred on algebraic geometry. He has also made contributions to the topics of abelian varieties and vector bundles.

Collaborations and Influences

He collaborated with Raoul Bott, who was at Harvard University. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard University, University of California at Berkeley, the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, UCLA, Oxford University, Cambridge University, the Max Planck Institute and University of Paris. In 1978, he gave one of the invited talks at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Helsinki. In 1999, he spoke about some aspects of the work of André Weil on the occasion of his being awarded the Inamouri Prize.

Ramanan discovered and encouraged Vijay Kumar Patodi, who proved part of the Atiyah-Singer index theorem, Patodi did his PhD under the combined direction of Narasimhan and Ramanan.[3] Ramanan was MS Raghunathan's senior colleague and influenced him considerably.[4]

Ramanan wrote the book Moduli of Abelian Varieties with Allan Adler, published by Springer-Verlag, and a graduate-level book on algebraic geometry called Global Calculus, published by the American Mathematical Society.[5] He continues his contributions via teaching and mentoring at the Chennai Mathematical Institute,[6] where he is adjunct professor, and at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai.

Awards

Ramanan received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, India's highest science prize,[7] in 1979; the TWAS Prize for Mathematics in 2001[8] and the Ramanujan Medal in 2008.

Personal life

He is married to Anuradha Ramanan, a translator and former librarian. They have two daughters, Sumana Ramanan, a journalist, and Kavita Ramanan,[9] a noted mathematician who is a professor of applied mathematics at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

Selected publications

• I. Biswas & S. Ramanan (1994). "An infinitesimal study of the moduli of Hitchin pairs". Journal of the London Mathematical Society. 49 (2): 219–231. doi:10.1112/jlms/49.2.219.

References

1. A conference in honour of S Ramanan Archived 26 September 2008 at the Wayback Machine
2. Koszul, J.-L. Lectures on fibre bundles and differential geometry. With notes by S Ramanan. Reprint of the 1965 edition. Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Lectures on Mathematics and Physics, 20. Published for the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay; by Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1986. viii+127 pp. ISBN 3-540-12876-X
3. "Patodi biography". History.mcs.st-and.ac.uk. Retrieved 12 January 2012.
4. "S. G. Dani on MS Raghunathan" (PDF). Retrieved 12 January 2012.
5. "AMS page on the book titled Global Calculus". Ams.org. Retrieved 12 January 2012.
6. "Chennai Mathematical Institute faculty page". Cmi.ac.in. Retrieved 12 January 2012.
7. "List of Bhatnagar award recipients in mathematical sciences". Csir.res.in. Archived from the original on 18 February 2012. Retrieved 12 January 2012.
8. "Prizes and Awards". The World Academy of Sciences. 2016.
9. "Kavita Ramanan". Math.cmu.edu. Retrieved 12 January 2012.