D.D.

Kosambi Selected Works in Mathematics and Statistics

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vi Preface

creation of numismatics as a form of historiography through the extensive statistical

analysis of large hoards of coins or his deduction of the probable location of the
Karasambhale caves [6] through a combination of estimation and logic.
Most scholars who have been influenced by the historical writings of Kosambi
are acquainted with a lesser extent with the nature and range of his mathematical
contributions [7]. This is mainly a domain issue: as a field, mathematics and history
are perceived as separated by a major cultural divide, and there is a general (and
reasonable) feeling that the mathematics would be too difficult to understand by any
but a trained mathematician. Ironically, Kosambi had in his lifetime experienced the
same reaction from the other side—his scientist colleagues at the TIFR had also not
appreciated the nature and the extent of his contributions to Indology and the study
of Indian history.
Kosambi’s intellectual legacy needs to be considered in its totality; the mathe-
matics is integral to his thinking and analysis and cannot be seen as separate from
the work in numismatics or, for that matter, history. DDK wrote about 65 papers
that were of a mathematical or statistical nature [7]. Some articles were pedagogic
expositions rather than original contributions, and some were multidisciplinary in
the sense that they integrated linguistics or numismatics along with the mathematics
or statistics. Two were the same work in two languages, Chinese [DDK56] and
English [DDK59]. In addition, there were original contributions in German [DDK7]
and French [DDK5, DDK20, DDK21, DDK42, DDK45], and one of his papers had
been translated into Japanese [DDK22]. He wrote at least two mathematical
monographs, but regrettably, these never appeared in print, and the manuscripts of
both of them are lost. Towards the end of his life, he published two articles
[DDK60, DDK64] in the Journal of the Indian Society of Agricultural Statistics that
tangentially implied that he had a proof of the Riemann hypothesis. These articles
contained an incomplete and flawed approach to this very fundamental mathe-
matical problem; the damage that they caused to his reputation as a serious
mathematician was irreparable and irreversible.
Details of Kosambi’s professional life are well known and bear only a limited
retelling [8]. On completing his BA (summa cum laude) at Harvard, Kosambi had,
for a complex combination of reasons, to return to India in 1929. He took up a
position at the Banaras Hindu University teaching mathematics and gave (optional)
German classes on the side [6]. Although he started doing some research in
mathematics at BHU, he was soon persuaded to move to Aligarh Muslim
University to join a department of mathematics headed by the French mathemati-
cian André Weil. It was here that Kosambi first earned a place in the history of
mathematics. His paper, On a generalization of the second theorem of Bourbaki
[DDK2], was written at the provocation of Weil, as “a parodic note passed off as a
serious contribution to a provincial journal” [9], the Bulletin of the Academy of
Sciences, U. P. [10]. The incident remains somewhat mysterious; according to
Weil, Kosambi was having problems with a colleague, and he (Weil) suggested this
prank, to name a theorem after a fictitious Russian author. Whether or not this paper
deflated the recalcitrant colleague’s ego is not clear, but nevertheless, this paper
Preface vii

of Kosambi marks the first occurrence of the name of Bourbaki in the published
literature [11].
Kosambi lasted 2 years in Aligarh before moving back to Pune, to Fergusson
College where he stayed until 1945. In this time, he first built up a reputation as a
serious mathematician, serious enough that he was elected to the Indian Academy
of Sciences by C.V. Raman in 1935 who also probably nominated him for the
Ramanujan Medal of the Madras University in 1934. He had started a study of the
area he termed “path–geometry” [12] that was to occupy him for several decades
subsequently. A note on the trial of Socrates appeared in the magazine of Fergusson
College in 1939, marking his initial professional foray outside mathematics. In
1940, this was followed by The emergence of national characteristics among three
Indo-European people [13] in the Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research
Institute. By this time, he had also begun his careful analysis of the weights of
ancient coins—the first publication on this topic also dates to 1940—and marks the
start of his use of quantitative methods in historical analysis.
The years of World War II saw DDK at his creative best. Between 1939 and
1944, he published 35 articles including two papers he wrote in 1943–1944 which
brought him considerable renown. One that appeared in the Journal of the Indian
Mathematical Society, Statistics in function space [DDK36], is a method for
decomposing an arbitrary signal into its significant components, a technique termed
the principal value decomposition. Today, this is known as the Karhunen–Loève
expansion, although both Karhunen and Loève did their work only later, in 1947
and 1948, respectively. It is regrettable that Kosambi’s work was not followed up
either by him or by others (although it was reviewed in Mathematical Reviews).
The second contribution is in his 1944 paper in the Annals of Eugenics [DDK37].
This work in genetics, on what is termed the map distance, quantifies the genetic
similarity in terms of the recombination frequency of linked genes. At the time
when DDK did the work, his knowledge of genetics was probably minimal, and the
structure of DNA was itself largely unknown. Nevertheless, Kosambi provided an
interesting and useful method to estimate the map distances from recombination
values and this work continues to be used and cited even to this day.
In 1945, DDK left Fergusson College to move to the newly established Tata
Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Bombay following an invitation from
the founding director, Homi J. Bhabha, to help establish a School of Mathematics.
This remained his address for the next 16 years, although his increasingly mean-
dering intellectual interests, his personal politics, his mathematical obsessions, and
his personal angularities all combined to make his tenure at the TIFR a fraught one.
The relationship between Bhabha and Kosambi started off on a cordial note.
Bhabha was responsible for having DDK elected president of the Mathematics
Section of the Indian Science Congress that was held in Delhi in early 1947 where
he gave his presidential address on “Possible applications of the functional calcu-
lus” [DDK44], a summary of his ideas on function spaces and the proper orthogonal
decomposition [14]. Bhabha also helped arrange a year’s visit to the USA for DDK.
He gave a course of lectures on tensor analysis at the University of Chicago
viii Preface

and also spent time at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton as well as
Harvard and MIT in Cambridge.
As his interests in historical analysis increased in the 1950s, DDK’s mathematics
inevitably slowed down. He travelled to the Soviet Union and China during this
period and wrote on a variety of social issues. All these activities were at variance
with the TIFR ethos; Bhabha, who was attempting to build a first-class research
establishment in nuclear science and mathematics, had little time to indulge DDK in
these pursuits. Towards the end of the 1950s, Kosambi started working on the
Riemann hypothesis. He published two papers offering a proof of this problem, in
the Indian Journal of Agricultural Statistics [DDK60, DDK64]. The motivation for
his foray into this work remains unknown since his approach, a probabilistic one,
does not evolve out of his earlier work. At any rate, his choice of the journal and the
scale of his claim (since the Riemann hypothesis remains unproven today) exposed
him to ridicule, both professionally and in person. Mathematicians who knew
Kosambi speak of this phase of his life with a distinct air of embarrassment.
The relationship with Bhabha soured, and DDK’s contract with the TIFR was
not renewed after 1962, making Kosambi one of the very few people to have
effectively been fired by the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. Between 1962
and 1964, DDK was without a formal position although he published papers both in
and outside mathematics. Peculiarly, he wrote four of these under the pseudonym
S. Ducray [DDK62, DDK63, DDK65, and DDK66]. In 1964, he was appointed a
CSIR emeritus professor attached to the Maharashtra Vidnyanvardhini in Pune, a
position he held until his death in 1966.
There remain important gaps in writings by or on DDK that need to be filled in
the order that an accurate picture of the evolution of his intellectual framework can
be drawn. His extensive correspondence with Professor and Mrs. R.J. Conklin
between 1930 and 1948, friends of him from his undergraduate years at Harvard, is
only partly available. The TIFR correspondence is on record, and the details of the
relationship with Bhabha that started out so cordially and ended in so much acri-
mony that DDK could not bring himself to be generous even after Bhabha died are
again well enough known but incompletely analysed. A series of letters exchanged
between Divyabhanusinh Chavda and DDK in his final and very bitter years remain
essentially unknown. Some of these gaps are being addressed, most recently in
Unsettling the Past, a collection of essays by and on Kosambi [15].
The present volume brings together the complete bibliography of the mathe-
matics papers of DDK, along with other essays on and by Kosambi. This preface
gives a general background, summarizing an earlier essay that was published in the
Economic and Political Weekly [8]. Part I of this book contains an introductory
essay, A Scholar in his Time, which analyses the mathematical development of
Kosambi and attempts to situate his contributions in context. This is a reproduction
of [16] with small modifications and is followed by selected essays by DDK that
help give a perspective on the many strands of thought that he integrated into his
work. The autobiographical Adventures into the Unknown [4] has appeared in part
in several collections as Steps in Science [17], but the essay, On Statistics, is not
widely known. In the war years, when Kosambi was teaching at Fergusson College
Preface ix

in Poona in his most intellectually fertile period, he made several interesting

mathematical contributions that were in part responsible for his being invited in
1945 to the newly formed Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Bombay, to
help its director, Homi J. Bhabha, to nucleate the School of Mathematics. Also
around that time, he received a small grant from the Tata Trust, and the report that
he submitted to them and which is reprinted here reveals a side of him that is not
evident in his publications. He worked on a diverse set of problems more or less
simultaneously, was meticulous in his accounts, and was frugal as well.
Reprinted in Part II are some of the most significant papers written by Kosambi
between 1930 and 1964, in particular, those that contributed to his reputation as well
as those that were responsible for its loss. The selection of papers and the essays that
are reprinted in this book are each accompanied by an introductory paragraph.
Part III contains a listing of DDK’s papers in languages other than English. Three
of these, in German, French, and Chinese, respectively, are reprinted. The articles
that are not reproduced here are available at the repository of the Indian Academy of
Sciences, Bangalore. Along with the personal papers of Kosambi that are now
available in the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, these various resources can
only help complete the mosaic of a complex and very gifted scholar.

New Delhi, India Ramakrishna Ramaswamy

June 2016

Note to the Reader

This volume includes both published papers in mathematics and statistics, as well
as essays and commentaries. The footnotes and citations in each of these come in
several styles.
• DDK’s papers are listed on pages xv–xix. They are cited as [DDK1], [DDK2],
etc. throughout the book.
• For biographical information, I have relied to a great extent on Chintamani
Deshmukh’s Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi: Jivan ani Karya (The life and
Work of D.D. Kosambi), Mumbai: Granthali, 1993. This was first published in
Marathi and subsequently translated into English by Suman Oak, and several
versions are freely available online. This is referred to as [DDK-JK] where cited
in the commentaries to the papers.
• For each of DDK’s published papers that has been reprinted here, the references
and footnotes appear within the article. Attempts have been made to remain
faithful to the originals.
• References cited in the Preface are listed on the following pages. References in
the essays and commentaries in Part I are collectively listed on pages 41–45.
x Preface

References

1. DDK’s books on history are (a) An Introduction to the Study of Indian History (Popular Book
Depot, Bombay, 1956), (b) Myth and Reality: Studies in the Formation of Indian Culture
(Popular Prakashail, Bombay, 1962) and (c) The Culture and Civilisation of Ancient India in
Historical Outline (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1965).
2. DDK edited the following three books on the poetry of Bhartrhari: (a) The Satakatrayam of
Bhartrhari with the Comm. of Ramarsi, ed. by D.D. Kosambi, K.V. Krishnamoorthi Sharma
(Anandasrama Sanskrit Series, No.127, Poona, 1945), (b) The Southern Archetype of
Epigrams Ascribed to Bhartrhari (Bharatiya Vidya Series 9, Bombay, 1946) and (c) The
Epigrams Attributed to Bhartrhari (Singhi Jain Series 23, Bombay, 1948).
3. The Oxford India Kosambi, ed. by B.D. Chattopadhyaya (Oxford University Press, New
Delhi, 2009); Combined Methods in Indology & Other Writings: Collected Essays, D.D.
Kosambi, Compiled, edited and introduced by Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya (Oxford University
Press, New Delhi, 2005); D.D. Kosambi, Indian Numismatics (Orient Longman, Hyderabad,
1981); D.D. Kosambi , Exasperating Essays (Peoples Publishing House, New Delhi, 1957).
4. D.D. Kosambi, ‘Adventure into the Unknown’, in Current Trends in Indian Philosophy, ed.
by K. Satchidananda Murty, K. Ramakrishna Rao (Asia Publishing House, Bombay, 1972).
5. D.D. Kosambi, Prime Numbers. The manuscript of this book, that was apparently mailed to
his publishers shortly before DDK’s death in June 1966, has not been traced.
6. C. Deshmukh, Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi: Jivan ani Karya (The life and Work of D.D.
Kosambi). (Granthali, Mumbai, 1993). First published in Marathi and subsequently translated
into English by Suman Oak; this book is cited as [DDK-JK].
7. The bibliography that now appears on pages xv–xix of this volume is a listing of the complete
set of the papers of DDK that are of a mathematical nature. The list has been compiled in part
from incomplete sources in the biography by Chintamani Deshmukh [6] as well as Web
listings. In addition to the papers listed, many of his essays relate to scientific issues, but these
are not included here.
8. R. Ramaswamy, Integrating Mathematics and History: The scholarship of D.D. Kosambi.
Econ. Polit. Wkly. 47, 58–62 (2012). Reproduced in [15].
9. A. Weil, The apprenticeship of a mathematician (Birkhäuser, Basel, 1992).
10. In the paper [DDK2], Kosambi thanks Weil for making him aware of the “important work” of
this Bourbaki. The French group eventually chose the initial N (Nicolas) for Bourbaki rather
than the D given by Kosambi.
11. M. Mashaal, Bourbaki: A Secret Society of Mathematicians, (American Mathematical Society,
Providence, 2006).
12. Starting with [DDK3], Kosambi developed the idea in a number of papers, including [DDK5,
DDK6, DDK8] and [DDK18] and so on. In the 1950s, he was on the editorial board of the
Japanese journal, Tensor (New Series) wherein he published [DDK55], possibly his final
paper on the topic.
13. The emergence of national characteristics among three Indo-European People. Ann.
Bhandarkar Orient. Res. Inst. 20, 195–206 (1940).
14. In [DDK45], Section 8, Kosambi gives the following examples of where the functional
calculus techniques would apply. If average temperature curves are available for any range or
period, is it possible to say whether two samples from two different places differ materially?
Or do two skulls found by the archaeologist or anthropometrician in two different places differ
significantly? The need for a mathematical technique to decide questions of this form is
suggestive of how his interests in one area inspired work in the other.
15. M. Kosambi (ed.), Unsettling the Past: Unknown Aspects and Scholarly Assessments of D.D.
Kosambi (Permanent Black, New Delhi, 2012).
Preface xi

16. R. Ramaswamy, A scholar in his time: Contemporary views of Kosambi the mathematician.
Occasional Paper of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Perspectives in Indian
Development, New Series 45 (2014).
17. Steps in Science, in Science and Human Progress: Essays in Honour of Late Prof. D.D.
Kosambi, Scientist, Indologist, and Humanist (Popular Prakashan, Mumbai, 1974).
Acknowledgements

A conversation with Romila Thapar at the Jawaharlal Nehru University a decade or

so ago made me aware that the mathematical side of DDK was still largely inac-
cessible to social scientists. Given the scale of his contributions to historical
research and in particular his introduction of quantitative methods into historical
analysis, it seemed worthwhile to undertake to collect his contributions in mathe-
matics and statistics in one place, much like what had been done for his historical
writing. Putting together a complete bibliography took a little more time than I had
anticipated, largely due to the fact that some of the journals that Kosambi published
in were not digitized (and some still are not). Nevertheless, with a little help from
friends who helped me get the more obscure articles, this was done by 2013.
An invitation from the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library to speak on
Kosambi’s mathematical contributions gave me the opportunity to put together the
material for the essay A Scholar in his Time that is the basis of Chap. 1 of this book.
DDK’s essays that are reprinted as Chaps. 2 and 3 have been published earlier but
are still incompletely known and especially in a volume of this sort are worth
recalling. I would like to thank the NCRA Library and the TIFR Archives for access
to digital versions of DDK’s papers. I would also like to thank the Indian Academy
of Sciences, the Current Science Association, the Indian Association for the
Cultivation of Science, the National Academy of Sciences, India, John Wiley and
Sons, the American Mathematical Association, the Indian Mathematical Society,
and the Indian Society of Agricultural Statistics for permission to reprint DDK’s
articles from their journals.
A number of people have helped along the way, and it is my pleasure to thank
them all. I have greatly benefited from conversations and/or correspondence with
Michael Berry, Divyabhanusinh Chavda, Indira Chowdhury, Shrikrishna G. Dani,
Louise Morse, Aban Mukherji, Rajaram Nityananda, Andrew Odlyzko, Oindrila
Raychaudhuri, Toshio Yamazaki, and, particularly, Romila Thapar. The mathe-
matical articles were retyped in LaTeX by Mr. Srinivas of the University of
Hyderabad in order to make the text more uniform, and Cicilia Edwin of the Indian
Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, assisted with the proofreading. Time has not been

xiii
xiv Acknowledgements

kind, not only to DDK’s mathematics but also to the various journals in which he
published: some of the articles are barely legible and quite difficult to read in the
original.
In large part, this book was a joint enterprise with Meera Kosambi who offered
considerable help, encouragement, and suggestions in the 5 years during which
I grew to know her well. Her death in February 2015 was a great loss, and in her
absence, this project feels oddly incomplete. In retrospect though, it seems she
knew her time was limited; in her last years, she was anxious to consolidate the
intellectual legacies of her grandfather and father in books she wrote and edited.
My family has been greatly supportive over the years, indulging my various
preoccupations and obsessions with patience and with grace. My wife Charusita
passed away earlier this year, and it is a great personal sadness that she did not live
to see this book in its final form. I know she felt that the effort invested in this
project was worth the while, and I hope that my children, Krithi and Rohan, will
feel the same way.

New Delhi, India Ramakrishna Ramaswamy

June 2016
D.D. Kosambi’s Mathematical and Scientific
Publications

Given below is a chronology of D.D. Kosambi’s articles in different areas of

mathematics, statistics, and science. In addition, he wrote two monographs, neither
of which were eventually published. The first, a book on Path Geometry, was to
have been published in the Annals of Mathematics Studies, a series edited by
Marston Morse at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton. The manuscript
sent to Morse and a copy that was given to Homi Bhabha could not be traced. In
2010, when Louise J. (Mrs. Marston) Morse was nearly 100 years old, the Morse
Archives were searched one last time. However, it was not possible to locate this
manuscript or any reference to it. Shortly before his death, Kosambi mailed the
manuscript of another book on Prime Numbers to his publishers, Routledge &
Kegan Paul. Unfortunately, this was also lost.
The papers that were reviewed in Mathematical Reviews are indicated, along
with the corresponding MR number and the name of the reviewer where applicable.
Some of these “reviews” merely record the publication of the paper and do not offer
a serious commentary on the work. The titles of papers that have been reprinted in
this collection are in boldface.
1. Precessions of an elliptical orbit,
Indian Journal of Physics 5, 359–64 (1930)
2. On a generalization of the second theorem of Bourbaki,
Bulletin of the Academy of Sciences, U. P. 1, 145–47 (1931)
3. Modern differential geometries,
Indian Journal of Physics 7, 159–64 (1932)
4. On differential equations with the group property,
Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society 19, 215–19 (1932)
5. Geometrie differentielle et calcul des variations,
Rendiconti della Reale Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei 16, 410–15 (1932)
6. On the existence of a metric and the inverse variational problem,
Bulletin of the Academy of Sciences, U. P. 2, 17–28 (1932)
7. Affin-geometrische Grundlagen der Einheitlichen Feldtheorie,
Sitzungsberichten der Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften,
Physikalisch-mathematische klasse 28, 342–45 (1932)

xv
xvi D.D. Kosambi’s Mathematical and Scientific Publications

8. Parallelism and path-spaces,

Mathematische Zeitschrift 37, 608–18 (1933)
Review: MR1545422.
The above paper was followed by an extract from the correspondence between
É. Cartan and DDK.
Observations sur le memoire precedent: Extrait d’une lettre à M. D. D.
Kosambi.,
Mathematische Zeitschrift 37, 619–22 (1933)
Review: MR1545423. The review attributes authorship of the paper to both
Cartan and Kosambi
9. The problem of differential invariants,
Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society 20, 185–88 (1933)
10. The classification of integers,
Journal of the University of Bombay 2, 18–20 (1933)
11. Collineations in path-space,
Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society 1, 68–72 (1934)
12. Continuous groups and two theorems of Euler,
The Mathematics Student 2, 94–100 (1934)
13. The maximum modulus theorem,
Journal of the University of Bombay 3, 11–12 (1934)
14. Homogeneous metrics,
Proceedings of the Indian Academy of Sciences 1, 952–54 (1935)
15. An affine calculus of variations,
Proceedings of the Indian Academy of Sciences 2, 333–35 (1935)
16. Systems of differential equations of the second order,
Quarterly Journal of Mathematics (Oxford) 6, 1–12 (1935)
17. Differential geometry of the Laplace equation,
Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society 2, 141–43 (1936)
18. Path-spaces of higher order,
Quarterly Journal of Mathematics (Oxford) 7, 97–104 (1936)
19. Path-spaces of higher order,
Quarterly Journal of Mathematics (Oxford) 7, 97–104 (1936)
20. Les metriques homogenes dans les espaces cosmogoniques,
Comptes Rendus 206, 1086–88 (1938)
21. Les espaces des paths generalises qu’on peut associer avec un espace de
Finsler,
Comptes Rendus 206, 1538–41 (1938)
22. The tensor analysis of partial differential equations,
Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society 3, 249–53 (1939)
Review: MR0001882 (1, 313f) Reviewer: E. W. Titt.
A Japanese translation of this paper appeared in Tensor, 2, 36–39 (1939)
Review: MR0001075 (1,176c) Reviewer: A. Kawaguchi.
23. A statistical study of the weights of the old Indian punch-marked coins,
Current Science 9, 312–14 (1940)
D.D. Kosambi’s Mathematical and Scientific Publications xvii

24. On the weights of old Indian punch-marked coins,

Current Science 9, 410–11 (1940)
25. Path-equations admitting the Lorentz group,
Journal of the London Mathematical Society 15, 86–91 (1940)
Review: MR0002258 (2, 21f) Reviewer: J. L. Vanderslice.
26. The concept of isotropy in generalized path-spaces,
Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society 4, 80–88 (1940)
Review: MR0003125 (2,166g) Reviewer: J. L. Vanderslice.
27. A note on frequency distribution in series,
The Mathematics Student 8, 151–55 (1940)
Review: MR0005390 (3,147h).
28. A bivariate extension of Fisher’s Z–test,
Current Science 10, 191–92 (1941)
Review: MR0005589 (3,175h) Reviewer: A. Wald.
29. Correlation and time series,
Current Science 10, 372–74 (1941)
Review: MR0005590 (3,175i) Reviewer: A. Wald.
30. Path-equations admitting the Lorentz group–II,
Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society 5, 62–72 (1941)
Review: MR0005713 (3,192g) Reviewer: J. L. Vanderslice.
31. On the origin and development of silver coinage in India,
Current Science 10, 395–400 (1941)
32. On the zeros and closure of orthogonal functions,
Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society 6, 16–24 (1942)
Review: MR0006770 (4, 39d) Reviewer: E. S. Pondiczery.
33. The effect of circulation upon the weight of metallic currency,
Current Science 11, 227–31 (1942)
34. A test of significance for multiple observations,
Current Science 11, 271–74 (1942)
Review: MR0007235 (4,107b) Reviewer: A. Wald.
35. On valid tests of linguistic hypotheses,
New Indian Antiquary 5, 21–24 (1942)
Review: MR0007247 (4,109a) Reviewer: A. Wald.
36. Statistics in function space,
Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society 7, 76–88 (1943)
Review: MR0009816 (5, 207c) Reviewer: J. L. Doob.
37. The estimation of map distance from recombination values,
Annals of Eugenics 12, 172–75 (1944)
38. Direct derivation of Balmer spectra,
Current Science 13, 71–72 (1944)
39. The geometric method in mathematical statistics,
American Mathematical Monthly 51, 382–89 (1944)
Review: MR0010937 (6, 91c) Reviewer: R. L. Anderson.
xviii D.D. Kosambi’s Mathematical and Scientific Publications

40. Parallelism in the tensor analysis of partial differential equations,

Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 51, 293–96 (1945)
Review: MR0011793 (6, 217e) Reviewer: J. L. Vanderslice.
41. The law of large numbers,
The Mathematics Student 14, 14–19 (1946)
Review: MR0023471 (9, 360i) Reviewer: W. Feller.
42. Sur la differentiation covariante,
Comptes Rendus 222, 211–13 (1946)
Review: MR0015274 (7, 396b) Reviewer: J. L. Vanderslice.
43. An extension of the least–squares method for statistical estimation,
Annals of Eugenics 18, 257–61 (1947)
Review: MR0021290 (9, 49d) Reviewer: J. Wolfowitz.
44. Possible Applications of the Functional Calculus,
Proceedings of the 34th Indian Science Congress. Part II: Presidential
Addresses, 1–13 (1947)
45. Les invariants differentiels d’un tenseur covariant a deux indices,
Comptes Rendus 225, 790–92 (1947)
Review: MR0022433 (9, 207b) Reviewer: N. Coburn.
46. Systems of partial differential equations of the second order,
Quarterly Journal of Mathematics (Oxford) 19, 204–19 (1948)
Review: MR0028514 (10, 458d) Reviewer: M. Janet.
47. Characteristic properties of series distributions,
Proceedings of the National Institute of Science of India 15, 109–13 (1949)
Review: MR0030731 (11, 42h) Reviewer: J. L. Doob.
48. Lie rings in path-space,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 35, 389–94 (1949)
Review: MR0030807 (11, 56a) Reviewer: O. Varga.
49. The differential invariants of a two-index tensor,
Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 55, 90–94 (1949)
Review: MR0028653 (10, 480b) Reviewer: V. Hlavatý.
50. Series expansions of continuous groups,
Quarterly Journal of Mathematics (Oxford, 2) 2, 244–57 (1951)
Review: MR0045732 (13, 624b) Reviewer: M. S. Knebelman.
51. (with S. Raghavachari) Seasonal variations in the Indian birth–rate,
Annals of Eugenics 16, 165–92 (1951)
Review: MR0046135 (13, 691b) Reviewer: R. P. Boas, Jr.
52. Path-spaces admitting collineations,
Quarterly Journal of Mathematics (Oxford, 2) 3, 1–11 (1952)
Review: MR0047387 (13, 870d) Reviewer: O. Varga.
53. Path-geometry and continuous groups,
Quarterly Journal of Mathematics (Oxford, 2) 3, 307–20 (1952)
Review: MR0051562 (14, 498g) Reviewer: A. Nijenhuis.
54. (with S. Raghavachari) Seasonal variations in the Indian death–rate,
Annals of Human Genetics 19, 100–19 (1954)
D.D. Kosambi’s Mathematical and Scientific Publications xix

55. The metric in path-space,

Tensor (New Series) 3, 67–74 (1954)
Review: MR0061869 (15, 898a) Reviewer: J. A. Schouten.
56. The method of least–squares, (in Chinese)
Advancement in Mathematics 3, 485–491 (1957)
Review: MR0100960 (20 #7385).
57. Classical Tauberian theorems,
Journal of the Indian Society of Agricultural Statistics 10, 141–49 (1958)
Review: MR0118997 (22 #9766) Reviewer: J. Korevaar.
58. (with U. V. R. Rao) The efficiency of randomization by card–shuffling,
Journal of the Royal Statistics Society 121, 223–33 (1958)
59. The method of least–squares,
Journal of the Indian Society of Agricultural Statistics 11, 49–57 (1959)
Review: MR0114265 (22 #5089) Reviewer: R. G. Laha.
60. An application of stochastic convergence,
Journal of the Indian Society of Agricultural Statistics 11, 58–72 (1959)
Review: MR0122792 (23 #A126) Reviewer: W. J. LeVeque.
61. The sampling distribution of primes,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 49, 20–23 (1963)
Review: MR0146168 (26 #3690) Reviewer: J. B. Kelly.
62. (as S. Ducray) A note on prime numbers,
Journal of the University of Bombay 31, 1–4 (1962)
63. (as S. Ducray) Normal Sequences,
Journal of the University of Bombay 32, 49–53 (1963)
Review: MR0197433 (33 #5598) Reviewer: B. Volkmann.
64. Statistical methods in number theory,
Journal of the Indian Society of Agricultural Statistics 16, 126–35 (1964)
Review: MR0217024 (36 #119) Reviewer: A. Rényi.
65. (as S. Ducray) Probability and prime numbers,
Proceedings of the Indian Academy of Sciences 60, 159–64 (1964)
Review: MR0179148 (31 #3399) Reviewer: J. Kubilius.
66. (as S. Ducray) The sequence of primes,
Proceedings of the Indian Academy of Sciences 62, 145–49 (1965)
67. Scientific numismatics,
Scientific American, February 1966, pages 102–11.
Contents

Part I Essays on and by D.D. Kosambi

1 A Scholar in His Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2 Adventure into the Unknown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3 On Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
4 A Report to the JRD Tata Trust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Part I References

Part II Select Publications of D.D. Kosambi

5 Precessions of an Elliptical Orbit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
D.D. Kosambi
6 On a Generalization of the Second Theorem of Bourbaki . . . . . . . . 55
D.D. Kosambi
7 Parallelism and Path-Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
D.D. Kosambi
8 Observations sur le mémoire précédent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
par Élie Cartan
9 The Tensor Analysis of Partial Differential Equations . . . . . . . . . . . 75
10 A Statistical Study of the Weights of Old Indian
Punch-Marked Coins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
D.D. Kosambi
11 A Bivariate Extension of Fisher’s Z-Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
D.D. Kosambi
12 The Effect of Circulation Upon the Weight of Metal Currency . . . . 93
D.D. Kosambi

xxi
xxii Contents

13 A Test of Significance for Multiple Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

D.D. Kosambi
14 On Valid Tests of Linguistic Hypotheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
D.D. Kosambi
15 Statistics in Function Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
D.D. Kosambi
16 The Estimation of Map Distances from Recombination Values . . . . 125
D.D. Kosambi
17 The Geometric Method in Mathematical Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
D.D. Kosambi
18 The Law of Large Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
D.D. Kosambi
19 Possible Applications of the Functional Calculus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
D.D. Kosambi
20 Lie Rings in Path Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
D.D. Kosambi
21 The Method of Least-Squares. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
D.D. Kosambi
22 An Application of Stochastic Convergence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
D.D. Kosambi
23 The Sampling Distribution of Primes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
D.D. Kosambi
24 Statistical Methods in Number Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
D.D. Kosambi
25 Probability and Prime Numbers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
S. Ducray

Part III Select Publications of D.D. Kosambi in Other Languages

26 Affin-geometrische Grundlagen der einheitlichen Feldtheorie . . . . . 215
von D.D. Kosambi
27 Les Espaces des Paths Généralisés Qu’on Peut Associer
Avec Un Espace de Finsler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Note de M. Damodar Kosambi, présentée par M. Élie Cartan
28 The Method of Least Squares . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Kosambi
(India)
About the Editor

Ramakrishna Ramaswamy is a professor in the School of Physical Sciences as

well as in the School of Computational and Integrative Sciences at the Jawaharlal
Nehru University, New Delhi. He served as the vice chancellor of the University of
Hyderabad during 2011–2015. Professor Ramaswamy’s main research interests are
in nonlinear science and systems and computational biology. He has been interested
in Kosambi’s life and works over the past decade and in early 2016 edited a book of
essays by D.D. Kosambi, Adventures into the Unknown (Three Essays Collective,
Gurgaon, 2016).

xxiii