Top 10 Indian Mathematicians of All Time

Top 10 Indian Mathematicians of All Time: Mathematics in India is quite old and there is evidence of practical mathematics even during the Indus valley civilisation. India has produced some of the most popular and talented mathematicians.

Thanks to the Indian mathematicians, the discovery and concept of Zero, the number series, infinity series, negative numbers, and many other scientific achievements are resurfaced in India.

The decimal number we use in our daily life was first used in India. So here is the list of the Top 10 Indian Mathematicians of All Time.

1. Aryabhatta

Aryabhata was a 5th-century mathematician and Astronomer who predicted that the earth is spherical and that it took 365 days to complete one rotation around the sun.

He also successfully approximate the value of Pi as 3.1416. Aryabhatta also used a place value system using letters to signify numbers and state qualities.

Aryabhata also recorded that the luminosity of the Moon (Chandra) and other near about planets is due to reflected sunlight, which makes him one of the top Indian mathematicians of all time.

2. Srinivasa Ramanujan

Srinivasa Ramanujan is one of the most famous Indian mathematicians who was born on 22 December 1887 in Erode, Mysore State, currently in Tamil Nadu.

He is famous for his contributions to the Hardy-Ramanujan Littlewood circle method in number theory. Ramanujan also worked on elliptic functions, continued fractions, partial sums, products of hypergeometric series, and infinite series.

Ramanujan became one of the youngest Fellows of the Royal Society (FRS) and only the second Indian member at that time.

3. Bramhagupa

Brahmagupta is one of the top Indian mathematicians and astronomers who was the first person to give rules for computing with zero and the concept of zero.

In 628 CE, he was the first to describe gravity as an attractive force and used the term “Gurutvakarsanam” in Sanskrit to describe gravity. Bramhagupta also described how to find the cube and cube root of an integer and gave the rules for the computation of squares and square roots.

4. Bhaskara

Bhaskara was a 7th-century Indian Mathematician and scientist who helped to disperse the mathematical work of Aryabhata. He is one of the greatest mathematicians of all time.

He is the first mathematician who claimed that any number divided by zero is infinity and that the addition of any number with infinity is also infinity.

Bhaskara is also known for Bhaskara I’s sine approximation formula which is one variable for the computation of the approximate values of trigonometric sines discovered by him.

5. P.C. Mahalanobis

Born on 29 June 1893 in Culcatta, P.C. Mahalanobis is one of the greatest mathematicians and statistic experts. He founded the Indian Statistical Institute in 1931.

His full name is Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis and he is one of the members of the first Planning Commission of free India.

P.C. Mahalanobis is known for Mahalanobis distance and Feldman–Mahalanobis model. He made a very significant achievement in the field of anthropometry.

6. C.R. Rao

Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao commonly known as C.R. Rao is an Indian mathematician and a fellow of the royal society. He is one of the most famous statisticians in the world and is well-known for the theory of estimation.

His contributions to statistical theory and applications are second to none. Roa was born on 10 September 1920 in Hadagali, Madras Presidency.

7. Harish Chandra

Harish-Chandra Mehrotra is not just a mathematician but also a physicist and a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). He is known for his work in representation theory, especially in the harmonic analysis on semisimple Lie groups.

He was born on 11 October 1923 in Kanpur and completed his study for his master’s degree at the University of Allahabad later shifted to the Indian Institute of Science and studied under Homi J. Bhabha.

Harish Chandra received many awards including the Cole Prize from the American Mathematical Society and the Srinivasa Ramanujan Medal for his excellent work in mathematics.

8. D.R. Kaprekar

Dattatreya Ramchandra Kaprekar is a recreational mathematician born in Dahanu, Bombay Presidency, India in the year 1905. He is one of the top Indian mathematicians with extraordinary achievements in his field.

D.R. Kaprekar described different classes of natural numbers including the Kaprekar, Harshad and Self numbers and also discovered Kaprekar’s constant, an iterative algorithm named after him.

He was a government school teacher at a government-owned junior school in Devlali Maharashtra, India. He and his life were quite inspiring to many scholars and students.

9. Satyendra Nath Bose

Satyendra Nath Bose was an Indian mathematician as well as a theoretical physicist. He is known for his collaboration with Albert Einstein and his notable work in quantum mechanics and statistics.

Bose developed the foundation for Bose statistics and the theory of the Bose condensate. He is also a fellow of the royal society. 

Satyendra Nath Bose received Padma Vibhusan (India’s second-highest civilian award) in 1954 from the government of India. He completed his education at the University of Calcutta.

10. Narendra Karmarkar

Narendra Karmarkar is a famous mathematician born in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, India in the year 1956. He is famous for developing Karmarkar’s algorithm for solving linear programming problems.

Karmarkar got his B.Tech in electrical engineering from IIT Bombay in 1978, and MS from Caltech. He is a rated ISI highly cited researcher which is quite impressive and makes him one of the top 10 Indian mathematicians of all time.

List of Top 10 Indian Mathematicians and Their Inventions