K. V. Sarma

Who was K. V. Sarma?

K. V. Sarma was an Indian historian of science, particularly the astronomy and mathematics of the Kerala school.

His doctoral thesis was at the Panjab University in 1977.

He was responsible for bringing to light several of the achievements of the Kerala school. He was editor of the Vishveshvaranand Indological Research Series, and published the critical edition of several source works in Sanskrit, including the Aryabhatiya of Aryabhata. He was recognised as "the greatest authority on Kerala's astronomical tradition".

He was the author of several entries in the Encyclopaedia of the history of science, technology, and medicine in non-western cultures.

As of 1994, he was the author of more than 60 books, and 145 research papers, in addition to other academic writing on Sanskrit and Indology.

He continued publishing well into his late eighties, his last book being Science Texts in Sanskrit in Manuscripts Repositories of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, published in 2003. He died on 13 January 2005, having just completed English translations of the Yuktibhāṣā of Jyesthadeva and the Tantrasangraha of Nilakantha Somayaji.