Harish-Chandra
Born On: October 11, 1923
Born In: Kanpur
Died On: October 16, 1983
Career: Mathematician
Nationality: Indian
For those who quiver at the thought of calculations and numerical deductions, unless when counting money, mathematics
can be the equivalent of hell on earth. And for such 'math atheists' a mathematician like Harish Chandra can very well seem
like a mirage. Harish Chandra is one amongst those few people who often change tracks in their career and yet reach a
glorious destination. Yes, he was a genius who studied theoretical physics but decided to build a career pursuing higher
mathematics as he felt that he didn't have the "mysterious sixth sense which one needs in order to succeed in physics". And
higher mathematics, as anyone will tell, is that jumble of confusion where alphabets are used more than numbers, X and Y
being particularly favorite. In a career spanning to three decades, Harish Chandra had worked with some of the best
mathematical minds of this age and whose work in representation theory brought it from the periphery of mathematics to its
center stage. Unarguably, he is the second greatest modern mathematician, after Ramanujan, of India.
Childhood
Harish Chandra Mehrotra was born in Kanpur, then known as Cawnpore in British India, to Chandrakishore Mehrotra, a civil
engineer and Satyagati Seth, the daughter of a wealthy lawyer. He spent most of his childhood at his maternal grandfather's
house where he received his early schooling at home from a tutor. He also learnt dancing and music. He was brilliant in his
studies, but was prone to frequent illness and both these aspect of his childhood continued throughout his life. At the age of
nine, Harish Chandra was enrolled in a private school and then completed his intermediate schooling from the Scindia
School. He joined the University of Allahabad to study theoretical physics in which he proved to be a brilliant student.
According to an interesting anecdote when C.V Raman was an examiner at the University, Harish Chandra solved the only
question of the acoustic paper, which was on the theory of vibration of the mridangam, on the spot. He was given 100%
marks by a highly impressed C.V Raman. Harish Chandra was influenced to study physics after reading the Principles of
Quantum Mechanics by Paul Dirac. In 1941, he completed his B. Sc and received his Masters Degree in 1943. He then
moved to the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore as a postgraduate research fellow under Homi Bhabha to work
on problems in theoretical physics. As a research fellow, Harish Chandra published several research papers along with
Bhabha, the first being 'On the Theory of Point Particles' in 1944.
Early Work
In 1945, Harish Chandra was selected as a research student under Paul Dirac and so moved to the University of Cambridge.
In Cambridge, he became a lifelong friend of Wolfgang Pauli when during a lecture by the famous physicist, he pointed out a
mistake. It was at Cambridge that Harish Chandra became more and more interested in Mathematics. In 1947, after
obtaining his Ph. D he moved to the USA, where Dirac was teaching in the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton
University. At Princeton, he worked as Dirac's assistant. His early influence in mathematics was triggered by the works of
Hermann Weyl, Emil Artin and Claude Chevalley who were working at Princeton and subsequently, moved over to
mathematics.
As A Mathematician
In 1949, Harish Chandra moved to Harvard and in 1950 he shifted to Colombia University, where he worked as a faculty
member. It was in Colombia University during the period 1950 to 1963 that he carried out research on 'semisimple lie groups'
which were considered to be his best research. It was also during this period that he studied the 'discrete series
representations of semisimple Lie groups' as his special area. He also worked with Armand Borel with whom he founded the
theory of arithmetic groups and collaborated numerous papers on finite group analogues. Harish Chandra is also known for
enunciating a precursor of the Langlands Philosophy known as 'Philosophy of Cusp Forms'. While still affiliated to
Cambridge, he worked at the Tata Institute in Bombay from 1952 to 1953 and then at the Institute for Advanced Study at
Princeton from 1955 to 1956 and as a Guggenheim Fellow in Paris in 1957 to 1958. In 1961, he awarded the Sloan Fellow at
the Institute for Advanced Study and worked there till 1963. Thereafter, he went back to the Institute of Advanced Study in
Princeton till he was appointed the IBM von Neumann professor in 1968 and served till his death.
Awards And Legacy
Harsh Chandra received many prestigious awards during his lifetime. In 1951, he published several papers on
'representations of semisimple Lie algebras and groups' for which, in 1954, he received the AMS Cole prize from the
American Mathematical Society. In 1973, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. The same year, he was awarded with an
honorary degree from Delhi University. The Indian National Science Academy in 1974 awarded Harish Chandra the
Ramanujan Medal for his work in mathematics. In 1975, he was made a fellow of the Indian Academy of Science and a
fellow of the Indian National Science Academy. In 1981, he was made a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in the
United States and was also bestowed with an honorary degree from Yale University. A bust of Harish Chandra was unveiled
at the Mehta Institute in his memory. His college, V.S.S.D College, which he attended during his youth, celebrates his
birthday every year. The Government of India renamed a premier institute devoted to theoretical physics and mathematics
the Harish-Chandra Research Institute (HRI) in his honor.
Personal Life & Death
In 1952, he married Lalitha Kale the daughter of Dr. Kale a botanist when he was serving a stint at the Tata Institute. He had
two daughters Premala and Devaki. In 1983, Harish Chandra was attending a conference to in honor of Armand Borel's 60th
Birthday in Princeton when he had a heart attack and passed away. He had suffered three heart attacks before. He died
before he could attend a similar conference in his honor and so the scheduled event became a memorial conference.
