C. P. Ramanujam

Who was C. P. Ramanujam?

Chakravarthi Padmanabhan Ramanujam was an Indian mathematician who worked in the fields of number theory and algebraic geometry. He was elected a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 1973.

Like his namesake Srinivasa Ramanujan, Ramanujam also had a very short life.

As David Mumford put it, Ramanujam felt that the spirit of mathematics demanded of him not merely routine developments but the right theorem on any given topic. "He wanted mathematics to be beautiful and to be clear and simple. He was sometimes tormented by the difficulty of these high standards, but in retrospect, it is clear to us how often he succeeded in adding to our knowledge, results both new, beautiful and with a genuinely original stamp".