K. Ananda Rau

K. Ananda Rau was an eminent Indian mathematician and a contemporary of Ramanujan. He was born in Madras on September 21, 1893 and attended the Hindu School and Presidency College in the same city. He was a brilliant student who won several prizes and scholarships. He sailed to England in 1914, a few months after Ramanujan, and joined King's College, Cambridge. There he completed his Mathematical Tripos in 1916 and became a research student under G. H. Hardy, who also mentored Ramanujan. He became friends with Ramanujan and was influenced by his work. He also had a relative, R. Ramachandra Rao, who was a district collector and a patron of Ramanujan. Ananda Rau wrote an essay under Hardy's guidance that fetched him the coveted Smith Prize in 1917. He was also elected a fellow of King's College. He worked on summability and convergence properties of infinite series, along with Hardy. He also published papers on theory of functions of a complex variable and sums of an even number of squares. A theorem named after him appears in Hardy's book Divergent Series. He returned to India in 1919 and joined Presidency College as a professor of mathematics at the age of 26. He later became the principal of the college and retired in 1948. He taught several well-known mathematicians, including S Chandrasekhar, K. S. Chandrasekharan, S Minakshisundaram, C T Rajagopal, C S Venkitaraman and M V Subbarao. His students regarded him as an inspiring teacher who emphasized that mathematics is an activity requiring immersion and dedication and not for spectators. He faced many personal tragedies in his life. His wife died at a young age in 1928 and a daughter in 1940. He also suffered from various disabilities, including blindness in one eye, in his later years. He died on January 22, 1966, at the age of 72. He was a foundation member of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore and a fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi. He was also awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India in 1957 for his contributions to mathematics.