On February 22, 2022, the Ramanujan Prize for Young Mathematicians celebrated Professor Neena Gupta’s exceptional contributions to the field. Hosted virtually, the ceremony recognized her remarkable achievements in affine algebraic geometry and commutative algebra. Professor Gupta, from the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata, was honored with the 2021 award, highlighting her significant impact on the world of mathematics.

About Ramanujan Prize for Young Mathematicians

• The prize is awarded annually to a researcher from a developing country funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) of the Government of India in association with ICTP (International Centre for Theoretical Physics) and the International Mathematical Union (IMU).
• Eligibility: It is given to young mathematicians less than 45 years of age who have conducted outstanding research in a developing country. It is supported by DST in the memory of Srinivasa Ramanujan.

Highlights of Srinivasa Ramanujan’s life

• In 1911, Ramanujan published the first of his papers in the Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society.
• Ramanujan traveled to England in 1914, where Hardy tutored him and collaborated with him in some research.
• He worked out the Riemann series, the elliptic integrals, hypergeometric series, the functional equations of the zeta function, and his own theory of divergent series.
• The number 1729 is known as the Hardy-Ramanujan number after a famous visit by Hardy to see Ramanujan at a hospital. It is the smallest number which can be expressed as the sum of two different cubes in two different ways.
• Hardy observed Ramanujan’s work primarily involved fields less known even amongst other pure mathematicians.
• Ramanujan’s home state of Tamil Nadu celebrates 22 December as ‘State IT Day’, memorialising both the man and his achievements, as a native of Tamil Nadu.
• Ramanujan compiled around 3,900 results consisting of equations and identities.

Who is Neena Gupta?

• 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 (NSA).
• The NSA described her solution as ‘one of the best works in algebraic geometry in recent years done anywhere’.
• The problem was posed by one of the most eminent founders of modern Algebraic Geometry, Oscar Zariski, in 1949.

What is the Zariski Cancellation Problem?

• It is one of the world’s greatest math problems. It is a fundamental problem in Algebraic Geometry.
• The problem was posed by one of the most eminent founders of modern Algebraic Geometry, Oscar Zariski, in 1949.
• He was one of the founders of modern Algebraic Geometry.
• Neena Gupta solved this problem which is considered as one of the best works in algebraic geometry in recent years done anywhere.

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