Ganesh Prasad

Ganesh Prasad (born November 15, 1876 in Ballia , Uttar Pradesh , † March 9, 1935 in Agra ) was an Indian mathematician. He is considered one of the fathers of modern mathematical research in India.

Life

Prasad came from a well-off Kayastha family. He studied at Muir Central College in Allahabad (Bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1895 with top marks) and at the University of Allahabad and the University of Calcutta. He received his PhD from Allahabad University (the first Indian doctorate in mathematics, Sc. D. 1898). He then taught in Allahabad at Muir Central College, among others, before he went to Cambridge University for further studies in 1899 , where he studied with Andrew Russell Forsyth , Joseph Larmor , HF Baker and Ernest William Hobson . He took part in the Adams Prize competition with his work On the constitution of matter and the analytical theories of heat (without winning it) and then studied at the University of Göttingen with Felix Klein , David Hilbert and Arnold Sommerfeld . His Adams Prize essay was published in the Göttinger Abhandlungen through Klein's mediation.

In 1904 he returned to India and became a professor at Muir Central College in Allahabad. A year later, Sudhakara Dvivedi retired from Queen's College in Benares and Prasad was sent there as his successor. Since he was the only math professor there, he had a heavy teaching load. In 1914 he became a professor at the University of Calcutta , in 1917 he was back in Benares at the university, where he reorganized mathematics classes. In 1923 he was again a professor in Calcutta ( Hardinge Professor of Mathematics ) and stayed there until his death at a conference at the University of Agra, which he co-founded.

In 1924 he became President of the Calcutta Mathematical Society and Vice President of the Indian Association for the Advancement of Science. He was a founding member of the National Institute of Sciences, later the Indian National Science Academy. He was the founder of the Benares Mathematical Society.

He dealt with potential theory, summability of series and special functions of mathematical physics and wrote a Treatise on spherical harmonics and the functions of Bessel and Lamé (on spherical surface functions and Bessel functions ). He also wrote a book on mathematicians in the 19th century (only the first two of three volumes of which appeared).

He was heavily involved in elementary math teaching in rural Uttar Pradesh . He donated from his own fortune for the education of girls and prize money for students at the University of Agra and donated for the universities in Allahabad and Benares.

His students include AN Singh and BB Datta , the authors of the History of Hindu Mathematics (2 volumes), and BN Prasad (1899–1966), an analyst trained in Liverpool and Paris, who was a professor in Allahabad and founder of the Allahabad Mathematical Society .

Fonts

• Some great mathematicians of the nineteenth century: their lives and their works, 2 volumes, Banaras 1933, 1934

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Biography of Prasad at the Indian Mathematical Society
2. ↑ A Hindu caste with a tradition as clerks and bookkeepers.