Abstract:
The mathematician D. D. Kosambi was the second person to be appointed to the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. Although he was on the staff from June 1945 to December 1962, a period of more than 17 years, it is now difficult to find traces of him in TIFR's public records. I describe his tenure at TIFR, the circumstances surrounding his departure from the Institute in 1962, and his contributions to the establishment of the School of Mathematics. His evolving academic, political, and social interests led to his gradual alienation from his colleagues, eventually resulting in his name being almost completely expunged from the Institute’s public memory.
About the Speaker:
Ramakrishna Ramaswamy, honorary professor at IISER Berhampur, obtained his PhD in 1978 at Princeton University and worked at the Jawaharlal Nehru University between 1986 and 2018. He has made fundamental contributions in the study of nonlinear dynamical systems, particularly on the control and synchronization of chaotic and stochastic systems. His interests also extend to genomics and biological physics, in particular to nonequilibrium processes at the cellular and subcellular level. His membership includes the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi, and he has served as Vice Chancellor of the University of Hyderabad between 2011 and 2015. He was President of the Indian Academy of Sciences in the period 2016-2018.
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