Manjul Bhargava, a number theorist from Princeton University, is one of the four Fields Medalists

Manjul Bhargava and Subhash Khot, are among the eight winners of the prestigious International Mathematical Union awards

Two mathematicians of Indian origin, Manjul Bhargava and Subhash Khot, are among the eight winners of the prestigious awards of the International Mathematical Union (IMU) that were announced at the inaugural of the 9-day International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) which began today at Seoul, Republic of Korea. The President of Korea, Park Geun-hye, gave away the awards. 

Read full story http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/major-mathematics-awards-to-two-indian-origin-scientists/article6309293.ece?homepage=true

Did Srinivasa Ramanujan fail in math?

Societies need myths to live by, and a mathematical genius failing in an exam is precisely the kind of myth that makes life alluring

How did Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920), the mathematical genius, fare in his Intermediate examinations? Did he fail in mathematics? Or did he score a centum? Conflicting assertions float. Myths hover around geniuses and lend them an aura, and Ramanujan is no exception. 

Interestingly, the myth originated even during the mathematician’s lifetime. The Madras Times of April 6, 1919,published a profile titled ‘A Famous Madras Mathematician: Mr. S. Ramanujan, FRS’ on the occasion of his return to India from Cambridge. This contemporary sketch, notes for which the paper claimed were “chiefly collected from papers in the possession of the Madras Port Trust,” Ramanujan’s employer, stated that “In December 1907 … he appeared privately for the First Arts Examination and had the distinction of failing in all subjects, doubtless as a result of his illness.” (original emphasis) 

Read the full story from the "The Hindu" article here.

Russian mathematician Yakov G. Sinai receives the 2014 Abel Prize

The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters has decided to award the Abel Prize for 2014 to Yakov G. Sinai (78) of Princeton University, USA, and the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, "for his fundamental contributions to dynamical systems, ergodic theory, and mathematical physics". The President of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Nils Chr. Stenseth, announced the winner of the 2014 Abel Prize at the Academy in Oslo today, 26 March. Yakov G. Sinai will receive the Abel Prize from His Royal Highness The Crown Prince at an award ceremony in Oslo on 20 May.

The Abel Prize recognizes contributions of extraordinary depth and influence to the mathematical sciences and has been awarded annually since 2003. It carries a cash award of NOK 6,000,000 (about EUR 750,000 or USD 1 million).

Read more from the Abel Prize official website 

The sum of all positive integers

What do you think you get if you add 1+2+3+4+5+... all the way on up to infinity? Probably a massively huge number, right? Nope. You get a small negative number:

This is, by a wide margin, the most noodle-bending counterintuitive thing I have ever seen. Mathematician Leonard Euler actually proved this result in 1735, but the result was only made rigorous later and now physicists have been seeing this result actually show up in nature. Amazing. (thx, chris).

References:

Obtained from the webpage http://kottke.org/14/01/the-sum-of-all-positive-integers

Only few more steps towards the proof of Twin Prime conjecture?

A mathematician virtually unknown to the experts in his field — a 50-something lecturer at the University of New Hampshire named Yitang Zhang gave a surprising shock the mathematical community a few months back. He showed that there exists infinitely many primes with difference equal to a  a number around 70 million.

Recall that, twin prime conjecture says that there exist infinitely many prime pairs of the form $(p_1, p_2)$ where the difference between them is exactly 2. For example 11, 12; 17, 19 etc.

The result proved by Zhang assumes importance since there has not been any result so far suggesting that there can be a fixed constant maximum distance between two primes one can attain.

Read the interesting article about the achievement at https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20130519-unheralded-mathematician-bridges-the-prime-gap/

There has been a lot of activity after the announcement of the result, and the gap has come down from 70 million to something else!
Read the rest of the story at https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20131119-together-and-alone-closing-the-prime-gap/

Book on Ramanujan in Malayalam - The man who knew infinity

Picutre of the Book release  function held on Aug 21st.

From left are Dr.Shibu, Dr Thamban, Dirctor, Kerala Language Institute, Mr. K C Joseph Minister for Cultural affairs, SRi OOmmen Chandy Honble Chief Minister, Dr. V N R Pillai and Prof. A Vijayakumar, CUSAT.

KLI has decided to translate in Malayalam such books in science .Proposals can be sent to Prof. Vijayakumar A.This will be announced on Nov 1st -Kerala Day.

See the press release at this link

Initiation into Mathematics 2013, Kerala

April 30, 2013 – May 12, 2013

(Conference/Workshop funded by MTTS/NBHM, DAE, Govt. of India)

department of Mathematics

Sanatana Dharma College, Alappuzha, Kerala

Academic Programme

The academic programmes were conducted from April 29 to May 11 on all days except on 5^h May (it being a Sunday). Sessions were conducted during 9 am to 5 pm every day. There were 6 sessions every day ,each sessions lasting for one hour. Four resource persons participated in the workshop giving lectures altogether in 72 sessions. The resource persons were

1. Prof. A Mohapatra, Goa University, Goa
2. Dr. Subrahmanyan Moosath K S, IIST, Thiruvananthapuram
3. Dr. P S Srinivasan, Bharatidasan University, Tiruchirappalli, Tamilnadu
4. Dr. Vishnu Namboothiri K, BJM Government College, Chavara, Kerala

Apart from the resource persons, a few teachers from nearby colleges also participated in the workshop helping the students during lecture sessions.