Veeravalli Seshadri Varadarajan (18 May 1937 – 25 April 2019) was an Indian mathematician at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

, who worked in many areas of mathematics, including probability,

Lie group In mathematics, a Lie group (pronounced ) is a group that is also a differentiable manifold. A manifold is a space that locally resembles Euclidean space, whereas groups define the abstract concept of a binary operation along with the additio ...

s and their representations, quantum mechanics, differential equations, and supersymmetry.

Biography

Varadarajan's father, Seshadri, was an Inspector of Schools in the Department of Education. He was transferred to Madras where the medium of instruction was generally English. After Varadarajan completed his high school studies, he joined Intermediate for two years at

Loyola College, Madras Loyola College is a private Catholic higher education institution run by the Society of Jesus in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. It was founded in 1925 by the French Jesuit priest, Francis Bertram, along with other European Jesuits. It is an auton ...

where he was taught mathematics by K.A. Adivarahan, a very strict disciplinarian who made a strong impression on him. Varadarajan received his undergraduate degree in 1957 from Presidency College, Madras and his doctorate in 1960 from the

Indian Statistical Institute Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) is a higher education and research institute which is recognized as an Institute of National Importance by the 1959 act of the Indian parliament. It grew out of the Statistical Laboratory set up by Prasanta C ...

in Calcutta, under the supervision of

C. R. Rao Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao FRS (born 10 September 1920), commonly known as C. R. Rao, is an Indian-American mathematician and statistician. He is currently professor emeritus at Pennsylvania State University and Research Professor at the Un ...

. He was one of the "famous four" at the

during 1956-1963 (the others being R. Ranga Rao, K. R. Parthasarathy, and

S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan Sathamangalam Ranga Iyengar Srinivasa Varadhan FRS (born 2 January 1940) is an Indian American mathematician, widely recognised as one of the most influential mathematicians of the 20th century. He is known for his fundamental contributions to ...

). In 1960, after his doctorate, Varadarajan went to Princeton University as a post-doctoral fellow and in the Fall of 1960 he went to the University of Washington, Seattle where he spent the academic year, followed by a year at the Courant Institute at NYU, after which he returned to the Indian Statistical Institute in 1962. He joined the Department of Mathematics at UCLA in 1965. Varadarajan was a member of the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholar ...

during the periods September 1968 until December 1968 and January 1976 until June 1976. In March 2019, it was announced by UCLA that Varadarajan and his wife had donated $1 million to the Department of Mathematics at UCLA to establish the Ramanujan Visiting Professorship.

Contributions

Varadarajan's early work, including his doctoral thesis, was in the area of probability theory. He then moved into representation theory where he has done some of his best known work. He has also done work in mathematical physics, in particular quantum theory and p-adic themes in physics. In the 1980s, he wrote a series of papers with Donald Babbitt on the theory of differential equations with irregular singularities. His latest work has been in supersymmetry. He introduced Kostant–Parthasarathy–Ranga Rao–Varadarajan determinants along with

Bertram Kostant Bertram Kostant (May 24, 1928 – February 2, 2017) was an American mathematician who worked in representation theory, differential geometry, and mathematical physics. Early life and education Kostant grew up in New York City, where he gradua ...

, K. R. Parthasarathy and R. Ranga Rao in 1967, the

Trombi–Varadarajan theorem In mathematics, the Trombi–Varadarajan theorem, introduced by , gives an isomorphism between a certain space of spherical functions on a semisimple Lie group, and a certain space of holomorphic functions defined on a tubular neighborhood of the ...

in 1972 and the Enright–Varadarajan modules in 1975.

Recognition

He was awarded the

Onsager Medal The Onsager Medal (''Onsagermedaljen'') is a scholastic presentation awarded to researchers in one or more subject areas of chemistry, physics or mathematics. The medal is awarded in memory of Lars Onsager who received Nobel Prize in Chemistry i ...

in 1998 for his work. He was recognized along with 23 Indian and Indian American members "who have made outstanding contributions to the creation, exposition advancement, communication, and utilization of mathematics" by the Fellows of the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

program on 1 November 2012.

Bibliography

*Varadarajan, Veeravalli S (1984). Geometry of quantum theory, Springer-Verlag. 1st Edition 1968. *; * * *; * * *Varadarajan, Veeravalli S. (2004). Supersymmetry for mathematicians: an introduction. Vol. 11. American Mathematical Society. * * *

Selected publications

* Parthasarathy, K., Rao, R., & Varadarajan, V. (1967). Representations of Complex Semi-Simple Lie Groups and Lie Algebras. Annals of Mathematics, 85(3), second series, 383–429. doi:10.2307/1970351 *. * Enright, T., & Varadarajan, V. (1975). On an Infinitesimal Characterization of the Discrete Series. Annals of Mathematics, 102(1), second series, 1–15. doi:10.2307/1970970

References

External links

*
Home page of Veeravalli S. VaradarajanIn Memoriam: Veeravalli Seshadri VaradarajanV S Varadarajan at the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta (K. R. Parthasarathy)
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Varadarajan, Veeravalli S. 1937 births 2019 deaths 20th-century Indian mathematicians Probability theorists University of California, Los Angeles faculty Indian Statistical Institute alumni 21st-century Indian mathematicians Presidency College, Chennai alumni Fellows of the American Mathematical Society