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Professor Neena Gupta awarded the 2021 DST-ICTP-IMU Ramanujan Prize

  • Posted By
    10Pointer
  • Categories
    National
  • Published
    13th Dec, 2021

Context

Professor Neena Gupta, a mathematician at the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata has been awarded the 2021 DST-ICTP-IMU Ramanujan Prize for Young Mathematicians from developing countries. 

  • She was awarded for solving the Zariski cancellation problem.

What is the Zariski cancellation problem?

  • It is one of the world’s greatest math problems. 
    • “The cancellation problem asks that if one has cylinders over two geometric structures, and that have similar forms, can one conclude that the original base structures have similar forms”
  • It is a fundamental problem in Algebraic Geometry. 
  • The problem was posed by one of the most eminent founders of modern Algebraic Geometry, Oscar Zariski, in 1949. 
    • He was one of the founders of modern Algebraic Geometry.

About Ramanujan Prize for Young Mathematicians

  • The Ramanujan Prize for young mathematicians from developing countries has been awarded annually since 2005. 
  • The prize is given to an eminent Mathematician who is less than 45 years of age on 31 December of the year of the award and has conducted outstanding research in developing countries
  • The Prize is administered by the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) jointly with the Department of Science and Technology (DST) Government of India and the International Mathematical Union (IMU).
  • This is sponsored by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India (DST).

Srinivasa Ramanujan 

  • Ramanujan was born on 22nd December 1887 in a village Erode (400 km from Chennai, then known as Madras).
  • The famous British mathematician Godfrey Harold Hardy recognised his talent in 1913. He went to Cambridge, on Godfrey Harold Hardy’s invitation.
  • Ramanujam made substantial contributions to the analytical theory of numbers and worked on elliptic functions.
  • He also worked on the partition of the whole number, hypergeometric series and Euler's constant.
  • His papers were published in English and European journals, and in 1918 he was elected to the Royal Society of London.
  • He died on April 26th, 1920, at the age of 32, just after returning to India after a long illness.
  • In India, December 22nd is celebrated as National Mathematics Day in the memory of Srinivasa Ramanujan.

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