Indian Mathematicians

Math Project for 20132014

Introduction
There is no doubt that the world today
is indebted to thecontributionsmade
by Indian mathematicians. Some of
the most
importantcontributionsmade by
Indian mathematicians were the
introduction of decimal system as
well as theinventionof zero. Here
are somethe famousIndian
mathematicians, along with their

Aryabhata
Place value system and zero
Theplace-valuesystem, was clearly in place in
Aryabhatas work. While he did not use a
symbol forzero, the French
mathematicianGeorges Ifrah argues that
knowledge of zero was suggested in
Aryabhata'splace-value systemas a place
holder for the powers of ten
withnullcoefficients.

Approximation of
Aryabhata worked on the approximation
forpi(), and may have come to the
conclusion thatitis irrational.

Trigonometry
Aryabhata gave the area of a triangle as "for a
triangle, the result of a perpendicular
with the half-side is the area.

Brahmagupta
Zero
Brahmagupta'sBrahmasphuasiddhantais the
first book that mentions zero as a number,
hence Brahmagupta is considered the first to
formulate the concept ofzero. He gave rules of
using zero with negative and positive numbers.
Zero plus a positive number is the positive
number and negative number plus zero is a
negative number etc.
TheBrahmasphutasiddhantais the earliest
known text to treat zero as a number in its own
right.

Brahmagupta's formula
Brahmagupta's most famous geometrical work
is hisformulaforcyclic quadrilaterals. Given
the lengths of the sides of any cyclic
quadrilateral, Brahmagupta gave an
approximate and an exact formula for the
figure's area, i.e., the area is the square

Srinivasa Ramanujan
In mathematics, there is a distinction
between having an insight and having a
proof. Ramanujan's talent suggested a
plethora of formulae that could then be
investigated in depth later. It is said that
Ramanujan's discoveries are unusually rich
and that there is often more to them than
initially meets the eye. As a by-product,
new directions of research were opened
up. Examples of the most interesting of
these formulae include the intriguing
infiniteseriesfor, one of which is given
below

P.C. Mahalanobis
Mahalanobis Distance
P.C. Mahalnobis asked Nelson Annandale the
questions on what factors influence the
formation of European and Indian marriages.
He wanted to examine if the Indian side came
from any specific castes. He used the data
collected by Annandale and the caste specific
measurements made byHerbert Risleyto
come up with the conclusion that the sample
represented a mix of Europeans mainly with
people from Bengal and Punjab but not with
those from the Northwest Frontier Provinces or
from Chhota Nagpur. He also concluded that
the intermixture more frequently involved the
higher castes than the lower ones.This
analysis was described by his first scientific
paper in 1922.During the course of these
studies he found a way of comparing and
grouping populations using a multivariate

C.R. Rao
Estimation theory
Estimation theoryis a branch
ofstatisticsthat deals with estimating the
values of parameters based on
measured/empirical data that has a
random component. The parameters
describe an underlying physical setting in
such a way that their value affects the
distribution of the measured data.
Anestimatorattempts to approximate the
unknown parameters using the
measurements.
In estimation theory, two approaches are
generally considered.
The probabilistic approach assumes that
the measured data is random
withprobability distributiondependent on
the parameters of interest
Theset-membership approachassumes

D.R. Kaprekar

D.R. Kaprekar discovered a number of results

in number theory and described various
properties of numbers including Kaprekar
Constant, Kaprekar Numbers, self numbers,
Harshad numbers and Demlo numbers.

Kaprekar Constant
Kaprekar discovered the Kaprekar constant
or 6174 in 1949.He showed that 6174 is
reached in the limit as one repeatedly
subtracts the highest and lowest numbers
that can be constructed from a set of four
digits that are not all identical. Thus, starting
with 1234, we have
4321 1234 = 3087, then
8730 0378 = 8352, and
8532 2358 = 6174.
Repeating from this point onward leaves the
same number (7641 1467 = 6174). In
general, when the operation converges it
does so in at most seven iteration.

Harish Chandra
He was influenced by the
mathematiciansHermann WeylandClaude
Chevalley. From 1950 to 1963 he was at
theColumbia Universityand worked on
representations of semisimple Lie groups.
During this period he established as his
special area the study of thediscrete series
representationsofsemisimpleLie groups,
which are analogues of thePeterWeyl
theoryin the non-compact case.

Discrete Series
Representation
Inmathematics, adiscrete series
representation an irreducibleunitary
representation of a locally
compacttopological groupGthat is a
subrepresentation of the leftregular
representationof Gon L(G). In
thePlancherel measure, such

Satyendra Nath Bose

Bose-Einstein
Statistics/Condensate
Bose showed that the contemporary theory
was inadequate, because it predicted results
not in accordance with experimental results.
In the process of describing this discrepancy,
Bose for the first time took the position that
theMaxwellBoltzmann distributionwould not
be true for microscopic particles, where
fluctuations due toHeisenberg's uncertainty
principlewill be significant. Thus he stressed
the probability of finding particles in
thephase space, each state having
volumeh3, and discarding the distinct
position andmomentumof the particles.
Bose's interpretation is now calledBose
Einstein statistics.
Einstein adopted the idea and extended it to
atoms. This led to the prediction of the

Bhskara II
Some of Bhskara IIs contributions are:
A proof of thePythagorean theoremby
calculating the sameareain two different ways
and then canceling out terms to
geta2+b2=c2.
Solutions
ofquadratic,cubicandquarticindeterminate
equationsare explained.
Solutions of indeterminate quadratic
equations (of the typeax2+b=y2).
Integer solutions of linear and quadratic
indeterminate equations.
Solved quadratic equations with more than
one unknown, and
foundnegativeandirrationalsolutions.
InSiddhanta Shiromani, Bhaskara
developedspherical trigonometryalong with a
number of othertrigonometricresults.

Narendra Karmarkar
Karmarkar's algorithm
Karmarkar's algorithm solveslinear
programmingproblems inpolynomial time.
These problems are represented by "n"
variables and "m" constraints. The previous
method of solving these problems consisted of
problem representation by an "x" sided solid
with "y" vertices, where the solution was
approached by traversing from vertex to vertex.
Karmarkar's novel method approaches the
solution by cutting through the above solid in its
traversal. Consequently, complex optimization
problems are solved much faster using the
Karmarkar algorithm.
His algorithm thus enables faster business and
policy decisions. Karmarkar's algorithm has
stimulated the development of several
otherinterior point methods, some of which are

Done by:
Jerome George, IX-C
DPS, Riyadh