Artwork by Rashi Jain

From conversation on:
Jan 15, 2023

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Perhaps, if you take off a layer, or maybe two, from anything and everything functioning/existing in this universe, the underlying layer would be Mathematics. Behind every pattern that ever existed from big types of machinery digging up holes in the ground to even the buzzing AI, everything can be written down in the language called Mathematics. It is pretty fascinating to even acknowledge the vastness of this subject but where in our learning did we move from counting melons to learning about the most abstract ideas? Do we really understand how immense the fabric of Mathematics stretches? Trying to connect many more dots like these, we converse with a mathematician - renowned number theorist, and an inspiration all round - Prof. Sujatha Ramdorai, who takes us for a quick dip into the sea of mysteries, ideas, and abstractions— basically building up to the world of Mathematics.

Prof. Sujatha Ramdorai is a highly regarded and renowned mathematician, and has made seminal contributions to the field of algebraic theory, of which one of the most remarkable is her work on formulation of non-commutative version of the main conjecture of Iwasawa theory. Notably, she is the only woman till date to have won the ICTP Ramanujan Prize(2006), and was also recently honoured with the Padma Shri by the Government of India. Prof. Ramdorai completed her Bachelor of Science in Mathematics at St. Joseph’s College, Bengaluru and finished her M.Sc. from Annamalai University in 1985. After a short hiatus, she went on to pursue her Ph.D. from TIFR, Mumbai where her dissertation work was titled “Witt Groups of Real Surfaces and Real Geometry" which was completed in 1992. She continued working there as a Professor later on for further research. Currently, she holds the position of Professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Prof Ramdorai also has keen interest in promoting education and science communication, starting at the grassroot levels, and her elucidations and single-handed personal work on descriptive versions of mathematics textbooks are one such labour of love and passion that are immensely precious, collated on a forum which she runs here: https://gyanome.org/. Prof. Ramdorai’s story is one of the singular examples of sheer brilliance combined with indomitable will of human spirit, that can cumulate to remarkable achievements.