Biography king harish chandra mathematician

Quick Info

Born
11 October 1923
Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India
Died
16 October 1983
Town, New Jersey, USA
Summary
Harish-Chandra was an Indian-born mathematician subject physicist who worked mainly unembellished America and did fundamental research paper in representation theory, especially pull a fast one Lie groups.

Biography

Harish-Chandra's mother was Satyagati Seth, who was the lass of the lawyer Ram Sanehi Seth, and his father was Chandrakishore who was a non-military engineer. Chandrakishore had been thoughtless at the Thomason Engineering Institute at Roorkee, then entered representation Indian Service of Engineers bracket the first part of career was [14]:-
... debilitated in the field, usually pull a fast one horseback, inspecting and maintaining description dikes of the extensive screen of canals in the yankee plains.
Since Harish-Chandra's father weary most of his time touring around the country inspecting canals, Harish-Chandra spent most of reward childhood living in his caring grandfather's home in Kanpur. Run into Sanehi Seth was a affluent man with a large boarding house which was home to innumerable of his relatives. Harish-Chandra, regardless of being a rather weakly youngster, did sometimes spend time itinerant with his father. His training was treated by the coat as of the utmost help [14]:-
A tutor was leased, and there were visits yield a dancing master and topping music master. At the flood of nine he was registered, younger than his schoolmates, contain the seventh class. He fit Christ Church High School disbelieve fourteen, and remained in Kanpur for intermediate college, which crystalclear finished at sixteen ...
Stylishness then attended the University clone Allahabad. Here he studied conceptual physics, this direction being ethics result of reading Principles panic about Quantum Mechanics by Dirac which he found himself in description university library. He was awarded a in 1941, then marvellous master's degree in 1943. Harish-Chandra worked as a postgraduate exploration fellow on problems in quixotic physics under Homi Bhabha, claim the Indian Institute of Body of knowledge at Bangalore in Southern Bharat. Bhabha had been a schoolchild of Dirac in the Decade. Harish-Chandra began publishing papers alternative theoretical physics while at Metropolis, and he published a pair of joint papers with Bhabha extending some of Dirac's consequences. For the first six months he spent in Bangalore purify lived with Dr Kale, well-ordered botanist from Allahabad, and her highness wife who had taught Harish-Chandra French when he was create undergraduate. The Kales had trim daughter Lalitha who at that time was a young miss, but about eight years afterwards in 1952 he returned foreigner the United States to Bharat and there married Lalitha.

Bhabha and Harish-Chandra's teacher, Juvenile S Krishnan at Allahabad Organization, recommended him to Dirac redundant research work at Cambridge which would lead to Ph.D. distinction. In 1945 Harish-Chandra went regard Gonville and Caius College, Metropolis, where he studied for crown doctorate under Dirac's supervision. Dispel Harish-Chandra saw comparatively little penalty his supervisor, giving up gathering Dirac's lecture course when type realised that Dirac was fundamentally reading from one of sovereign books. He wrote that Dirac was (see for example [14]):-
... very gentle and nice and yet rather aloof paramount distant. ... [I decided] Unrestrainable should not bother him likewise much and went to hypothesis him about once each term.
During his time in Metropolis he began to move withdraw from physics and became a cut above interested in mathematics attending honourableness lecture courses of Littlewood delighted Hall. He also attended unadorned lecture by Pauli and acute out a mistake in Pauli's work. The two were designate become life long friends. Harish-Chandra obtained his degree in 1947 for his thesis Infinite irreducible representations of the Lorentz group in which he gives well-ordered complete classification of the irreducible unitary representations of SL(2,C).

Dirac visited Princeton for the collection 1947-48 and Harish-Chandra went stamp out the United States with him, working as his assistant by way of this time. However he was greatly influenced by the trustworthy mathematicians Weyl, Artin and Chevalley who were working there. On your toes was during this year loaded Princeton that he finally unmistakable that he was a mathematician and not a physicist. Unquestionable later wrote (see for specimen [14]):-
Soon after coming revert to Princeton I became aware think it over my work on the Physicist group was based on moderately shaky arguments. I had affectionately manipulated unbounded operators without rich any attention to their domains of definition. I once complained to Dirac about the feature that my proofs were not quite rigorous and he replied, "I am not interested in proofs but only in what loving does." This remark confirmed sweaty growing conviction that I upfront not have the mysterious 6th sense which one needs encompass order to succeed in physics and I soon decided cause to feel move over to mathematics.
Equate Dirac returned to Cambridge, Harish-Chandra remained at Princeton for fine second year. He spent 1949-50 at Harvard where he was influenced by Zariski. The time 1950 to 1963, spent available Columbia University, New York, was his most productive. During that time he worked on representations of semisimple Lie groups. Further during this period he challenging close contact with Weil. As we say that he exhausted the years 1950-63 at River University we really mean wind he was on the skill there for this period, on the other hand it is fair to speak that he spent long periods in other institutions. He weary 1952-53 at the Tata League in Bombay and it was during this year that noteworthy married Lalitha Kale (often influential as Lily); they had bend over daughters [14]:-
Lily ... be level with good spirits, generous affection, submission, and all-round competence was denomination pamper him for thirty years.
He spent 1955-56 at loftiness Institute for Advanced Study level Princeton, 1957-58 as a Industrialist Fellow in Paris where explicit was able to work bend Weil and the two usually went walking together. He was a Sloan Fellow at distinction Institute for Advanced Study disseminate 1961 to 1963.

Fall apart [14] Harish-Chandra is quoted bring in saying that he believed guarantee his lack of background show mathematics was in a opening responsible for the novelty appeal to his work:-
I have many a time pondered over the roles racket knowledge or experience, on distinction one hand, and imagination order intuition, on the other, show the process of discovery. Side-splitting believe that there is unornamented certain fundamental conflict between illustriousness two, and knowledge, by boost caution, tends to inhibit prestige flight of imagination. Therefore, natty certain naiveté, unburdened by square wisdom, can sometimes be systematic positive asset.
Armand Borel describes some of Harish-Chandra's contributions hassle [6]. Schwermer reviews that trench as well as [25] come to rest what follows is taken yield these reviews:-
The impression give someone a jingle has of Harish-Chandra's work chimpanzee a whole is one cosy up surprising cohesiveness and uniformity. Realm primary interests revolved about probity representation theory of reductive aggregations and harmonic analysis on these groups and their related uniform spaces. However Harish-Chandra made a sprinkling attempts to get into algebraical geometry or number theory.

He has built a indispensable theory of representations of Stumble groups and Lie algebras, separately of harmonic analysis on these groups and their homogeneous spaces. It was Harish-Chandra who considerable the concept of a make-up of finite-dimensional representations of semisimple Lie groups to the folder of infinite-dimensional representations; he stalwart an analogue of Weyl's brand formula.

Some major hand-outs by Harish-Chandra's work may suspect singled out: the explicit persistence of the Plancherel measure plump for semisimple groups, the determination try to be like the discrete series representations, sovereign results on Eisenstein series roost in the theory of automorphic forms, his "philosophy of bend forms", as he called skilful, as a guiding principle resist have a common view get through certain phenomena in the portrait theory of reductive groups respect a rather broad sense, containing not only the real Support groups, but p-adic groups or else groups over adele rings. Coronate scientific work, being a coalescence of analysis, algebra and geometry, is still of lasting influence.
Harish-Chandra worked at the College of Advanced Study at University from 1963. He was prescribed IBM-von Neumann Professor in 1968.

He died of ingenious heart attack at the peter out of a week long word in Princeton, having earlier greeting from three heart attacks, grandeur first being in 1969 add-on the third in 1982. Personal October 1983 a conference boast honour of Armand Borel was held in Princeton [14]:-
... for the week of goodness conference, [Harish-Chandra's] vigour and group reasserted themselves. Princeton's warm, murky autumn weather prevailed and amidst lectures at the conference, perspective a lawn or a plateau of the Institute, he was the centre of a full of life crowd, expressing his views have an effect on a variety of topics. Grass on Sunday 16 October, the grasp day of the conference elegance and Lily had many receive the participants to their territory. He was a sparkling landlady. In the late afternoon, afterward the guests had departed, sharptasting went for his customary hike, and never returned alive.
Harish-Chandra received many awards in fulfil career. He was a Likeness of the Royal Society(1973), nifty Fellow of the National College of Sciences(United States)(1981), the Asiatic Academy of Sciences and dignity Indian National Science Academy (1975). He won the Cole trophy from the American Mathematical Speak together in 1954 for his writing on representations of semisimple Wet algebras and groups, and especially for his paper On passable applications of the universal on all sides algebra of a semisimple Contaminate algebra which he had available in the Transactions of representation American Mathematical Society in 1951. In 1974, he received authority Ramanujan Medal from Indian Governmental Science Academy. He was awarded honorary degrees by Delhi Code of practice (1973) and Yale University (1981).

Having been both unmixed physicist and a mathematician deter is interesting to see Harish-Chandra's view of their relationship. That is described nicely in [14]:-
Although he was convinced lapse the mathematician's very mode treat thought prevented him from comprehending the essence of theoretical physics, where, he felt, deep forewarning and not logic prevailed, instruction sceptical of any mathematician who presumed to attempt to comprehend it, he was even other impatient with those mathematicians pop into whom a sympathy for unproved physics was lacking, a devoted he attributed in particular attack the French school of excellence 1950s.
His character is designated in [28]:-
... he was a tall, handsome man, who was somewhat reserved, but who possessed a formal courtesy deviate did not conceal the extent of his feelings and gloomy. In his early years noteworthy liked to paint and closest expressed a fondness for influence French Impressionists. ... One stare his colleagues suggested that Harish-Chandra survives in his work, which faithfully mirrored his personality: strong, lofty, and uncompromising.

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  27. V S Varadarajan, Harish-Chandra headstone talk, in The mathematical donation of Harish-Chandra, Baltimore, MD, Jan 9-10, 1998(Amer. Math. Soc., Extra, RI, 2000), 55-57.
  28. J D Zund, Harish-Chandra, American National Biography10(Oxford, 1999), 80-81.

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Written stomachturning J J O'Connor and Fix F Robertson
Last Update Sage 2005