Indian Mathematician receives 2021 DST-ICTP-IMU Ramanujan Prize

Contact Counsellor

Last Updated11/12/2021

Professor Neena Gupta, a mathematician at the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata, has been awarded the 2021 DST-ICTP-IMU Ramanujan Prize for Young Mathematicians from developing countries for her outstanding work in affine algebraic geometry and commutative algebra.
The problem was posed by one of the most eminent founders of modern Algebraic Geometry, Oscar Zariski, in 1949.

Professor Gupta's solution for solving the Zariski cancellation problem, a fundamental problem in Algebraic Geometry, earned her the 2014 Young Scientists Award of the Indian National Science Academy, who described her solution as ‘one of the best works in algebraic geometry in recent years done anywhere’.
Professor Gupta is the third woman to receive the Ramanujan Prize, which was first awarded in 2005.

It has been awarded annually since 2005. It was originally instituted by ICTP, the Niels Henrik Abel Memorial Fund, and the International Mathematical Union (IMU).
The participation of the Abel Fund ended in 2012; the Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India (DST) has now agreed to fund the Prize for a 5 year period, starting with the 2014 Prize.
This Prize is awarded annually to a researcher from a developing country who is less than 45 years of age on 31 December of the year of the award, and who has conducted outstanding research in a developing country.
Researchers working in any branch of the mathematical sciences are eligible.
The Prize carries a $15,000 cash award.
The Prize is given with the provision that the prize money be used to support the research of the recipient.
The winner will be invited to ICTP to receive the Prize and deliver a lecture.
The Prize is usually awarded to one person, but may be shared equally among recipients who have contributed to the same body of work.
In 2021, the name of the Prize was changed to the ""DST-ICTP-IMU Ramanujan Prize"".
The Selection Committee takes into account not only the scientific quality of the research, but also the background of the candidate and the environment in which the work was carried out.
The Committee consists of eminent mathematicians appointed in consultation between ICTP, the IMU, and the DST.

He was an Indian mathematician who lived during the British Rule in India. Though he had almost no formal training in pure mathematics, he made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions, including solutions to mathematical problems then considered unsolvable.
Seeking mathematicians who could better understand his work, in 1913 he began a postal correspondence with the English mathematician G. H. Hardy at the University of Cambridge, England. Recognising Ramanujan's work as extraordinary, Hardy arranged for him to travel to Cambridge. In his notes, Hardy commented that Ramanujan had produced groundbreaking new theorems, including some that ""defeated me completely; I had never seen anything in the least like them before"",[5] and some recently proven but highly advanced results.
During his short life, Ramanujan independently compiled nearly 3,900 results (mostly identities and equations).
Many were completely novel; his original and highly unconventional results, such as the Ramanujan prime, the Ramanujan theta function, partition formulae and mock theta functions, have opened entire new areas of work and inspired a vast amount of further research.
Of his thousands of results, all but a dozen or two have now been proven correct.
He became one of the youngest Fellows of the Royal Society and only the second Indian member, and the first Indian to be elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. "