Indian American mathematician Srinivasa Varadhan gets Padma Vibhushan
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Arun Kumar- 0
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Indian Canadian mathematician Sujatha Ramdorai also awarded Padma Shri on India’s Republic Day
Indian American mathematician S R Srinivasa Varadhan, widely recognized as one of the most influential mathematicians of the 20th century, has been awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second highest civil honor.
Known for his fundamental contributions to probability theory, Madras born Varadhan is one of the six awarded the honor for “exceptional and distinguished service” on India’s Republic Day.
Read: Indian American Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai and Madhur Jaffery get Padma Bhushan (January 25, 2022)
In 2008, Varadhan was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India’s third highest civilian honor.
Indian Canadian mathematician Sujatha Ramdorai is one of the 91 recipients of Padma Shri, India’s fourth highest civilian honor “for distinguished service in any field.”
Varadhan, 83, and Ramdorai, 62, are the only two persons of Indian origin among 106 recipients of the prestigious Padma Awards, on India’s 73rd Republic Day.
Varadhan became the first Asian to win the Abel Prize in 2007 for his fundamental contributions to probability theory and in particular for creating a unified theory of large deviations.
After receiving his PhD from the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta, Varadhan began his academic career at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences as a postdoctoral fellow (1963–66). At Courant, Varadhan served as assistant professor (1966–68), associate professor (1968–72), and became a full professor in 1972.
Read: Indian American Narinder Singh Kapany posthumously conferred Padma Vibhushan (November 10, 2021)
He is currently Professor of Mathematics and Frank J. Gould Professor of Science at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University.
He was appointed Director of Courant (1980-84), and then came back to serve a second period as Director of Courant (1992-94). His awards and honours include the Birkhoff Prize (1994), the Margaret and Herman Sokol Award of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, New York University (1995), and the Leroy Steele Prize (1996).
Varadhan has been elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1988), the Third World Academy of Sciences (1988), and the National Academy of Sciences (1995).
He was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (1991), the Royal Society (1998), the Indian Academy of Sciences (2004), the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (2009), and the American Mathematical Society (2012).
Ramdorai, a Professor of Mathematics at the School of Mathematics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, is the first and only Indian to win the prestigious ICTP Ramanujan Prize in 2006.
Read: Padma awards for 2 Indian mathematicians from US, Canada (January 26, 2023)
She is also a recipient of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award. She is a member of the Scientific Committee of several international research agencies such as the Indo-French Centre for Promotion of Advanced Research, Banff International Research Station, International Centre for Pure and Applied Mathematics.
Ramdorai was a Member of the National Knowledge Commission and is Member of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. Her research interests include Arithmetic Geometry, Elliptic curves, the study of motives and noncommutative Iwasawa theory. She currently holds a Canada Research Chair at the University of British Columbia, Canada.