SR Srinivas Vardhan is an American mathematician, known for his fundamental contributions to probability theory. He is considered one of the most influential mathematicians of the 20th century. He is the Frank J. Professor of Science at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University. Gold Professor and Professor of Mathematics. In 2008, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan in the fields of literature and education, and in 2023, he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second highest civilian honour, for his extraordinary and distinguished service.
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Wiki/Biography
Sathamangalam Ranga Iyengar Srinivas Vardhan was born on Tuesday, 2 January 1940 (age 83 years; as in 2023) in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. As a child, he grew up in several small towns away from Madras.
7 year old Sathamangalam in traditional Brahmin attire
In 1954, he moved to live with his uncle in Tambaram, a suburb of Madras, to enroll in a local college, where he was required to study for two years before entering university. He completed his schooling from Board High School in Ponneri, Madras. He graduated from Presidency College, Madras in 1960, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Statistics in 1957 and later a Master of Science in Statistics in 1959. When Vardhan was studying in college, he faced many difficulties due to the language barrier. He could not understand the English spoken by the teachers. Therefore, he studied Tamil and English. In 1963, he earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta and then became a postdoctoral fellow at the Courant Institute in New York.
A photograph of SR Srinivas Vardhan (third from left) with Kolmogorov during his visit to India in 1962
Physical Appearance
Hair Color: Salt and Pepper
Eye colour: dark brown
family and caste
He belongs to a Hindu-Brahmin Tamil family in Madras (now Chennai).
parents and siblings
His father, Ranga Iyengar, was a science teacher who later became the principal of the Board High School in Ponneri, Madras. Ranga Iyengar was born in 1899 and was married at the age of 18. Srinivas’s mother was only 10 years old when she was married to Ranga Iyengar. Srinivas is the only child of his parents.
SR Srinivas Vardhan with his father
In 2007, while accepting the Abel Prize, Vardhan thanked his parents and said,
Education was always given high priority in our home and I received constant encouragement from both my parents.”
wife and children
In June 1964, he was married to Vasundra Vardhan, one of the renowned educationists. Vasu Vardhan has a PhD in Media Studies and is a faculty member of New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. He has taught a wide range of interdisciplinary seminars on media theory, identity in a multicultural world, ancient Indian literature, and South Asian literature, with a special focus on emerging Indian writers in the diaspora.
SR Srinivas Vardhan with Vasundra Vardhan in 1964
The couple had two sons, Gopal and Ashok. His elder son Gopalakrishnan Vardhan was born in 1969 and Ashok was born in 1972. In August 2001, Gopal joined Cantor Fitzgerald as managing director of its interest rate derivatives business in the United States, but during the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, United States, Gopal’s Murdered at the age of 32.
other relatives
His younger son Ashok is married to Maggie and has a son named Gavin.
livelihood
In 1963, he began working at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University, on the recommendation of American mathematician and New York University (NYU) professor Monroe D. Donsker, where he was a postdoctoral fellow until 1966.
SR Srinivas Vardaan and Monroe Donskar
Vardhan became an assistant professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in 1966 and was promoted to associate professor in 1968. Five years later, he was appointed as a professor there. He held the position of Director of the Courant Institute for four years (1980–1984) and then, Vardhan took a sabbatical from 1984 to 1985; However, he was re-appointed as director of the Courant Institute in 1992. In 1995, Vardhan became a member of the US National Academy of Sciences. In 2001, he was elected to serve as President of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences for session 2002–03. He was elected as a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 2004, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics in 2009, and the American Mathematical Society in 2012.
research work
He has contributed to extensive research on stochastic processes in addition to mathematical physics and hydrodynamics. He is widely recognized for his research on large divergences, on which he worked with Monroe D. Donsker. Later, Vardhan was appointed as a professor at the Courant Institute. Mr. Vardan has worked with Daniel W. Stroock, an American mathematician and probabilist, on diffusion processes.
SR Srinivas Vardhan (left) and Daniel W Stroll
Vardan’s major contributions to the field of mathematics include diffusion equations and PDEs, large divergence theory, martingale problems, and Vardan’s lemma. In 1974, he wrote a book called Mathematical Statistics, based on lectures and monographs co-written by Daniel Stroock. One of his works for which he was awarded the Leroy P. Steele Prize in 1996 includes Multidimensional Diffusion Processes, written in 1979. He wrote several books, including Diffusion Problems and Partial Differential Equations (1980) and Large Deviations and Applications (1984). In 2001, he wrote ‘Probability Theory’, based on the first-year graduate course lectures given by Vardan at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, from 1996 to 1999.
Awards and Honors
award
- 1994: AMS-SIAM George David Birkhoff Award
- 1995: Margaret and Herman Sokol Award of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of New York University
- 1996: Co-recipient of the Leroy P. Steele Award for Fundamental Contributions to Research from the American Mathematical Society (AMS) for his work with Daniel W. Stroh on diffusion processes.
- 2007: Abel Prize by the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters for his contributions to probability theory and creating a unified theory of large divergence with Monroe D. Donsker
King Harald V of Norway congratulates SR Srinivas Vardhan for winning the Abel Prize in 2007
Respect
- 2004: He also holds two honorary degrees from the University Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris (2003) and the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata, India.
- 2008: Padma Bhushan in the field of literature and education
- 2010: National Science Medal for his research in probability theory
In 2010, Barack Obama awarded the National Medal of Science to SR Srinivas Vardhan.
Fellowship
- 1988: American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- 1988: Third World Academy of Sciences
- 1991: Institute of Mathematical Statistics, Royal Society
- 2004: Indian Academy of Sciences
- 2009: Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
- 2012: American Mathematical Society
Facts/General Knowledge
- His friends and colleagues fondly called him Raghu.
- When he was studying in the final year of high school, his mathematics teacher took special interest in a small group of students including Vardhan and asked them to come to his house on weekends to solve some mathematics problems. In his autobiography, Vardhan recalled that his teacher made him believe that solving mathematical problems or puzzles was fun.
- He received his PhD degree at the age of 23.
- In an interview, while talking about Vardhan’s childhood aspirations, he revealed that when he was younger, he dreamed of becoming a doctor and said,
But once, with a group of fellow high school students, I went to a medical exhibition at the local medical college where medical students demonstrated their surgical skills on cadavers. “This destroyed my desire to enter the medical profession.”
- According to Vardhan, Physics was his favorite subject during his school days.
- He has chaired the Mathematical Sciences Jury for the Infosys Prize since 2009 and was the chief guest in 2020.
SR Srinivas as one of the jury chairpersons of the Infosys Awards in Vardaan 2019
- In an interview, Vardhan expressed his interest in traveling and listening to music, both classical Indian and classical Western music. He also said that he likes going to concerts, theater and movies.
- Vardhan is an avid reader and reads Tamil literature with great interest.
- When Vardhan applied to Presidency College, Madras, he was denied admission to Chemistry, so he opted for Statistics.
- While he was studying in Calcutta, Vardhan delivered a speech on his thesis in front of three examiners, among whom the Soviet mathematician Andrey Kolmogorov also presided. According to Vardhan, he took extra time due to which the lecture became boring and the audience started leaving. Recalling this incident in an interview, he said,
I talked for a long time. The audience became restless and some left just before Kolmogorov, who was standing to comment, was about to speak. He threw down the chalk and went out angrily. My immediate reaction was “I’m done with my PhD”. A group of us followed him to his room and I apologized profusely for taking so long. His response was, “I am used to long seminars in Moscow. But when Kolmogorov wants to speak, people should listen.”
- In 1963, Vardhan received his thesis report, sent by Andrey Kolmogorov from Moscow, Russia. In the report, Kolmogorov had good words for Vardhan and wrote how Vardhan was someone “to whose future the country can look with pride and hope.”
Categories: Biography
Source: vcmp.edu.vn