An Indian American, Srinivasa SR Varadhan of the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York, has won the 2007 Abel Prize awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. |
The prize, which is worth $920,000, has been given for Varadhan's "fundamental contributions to probability theory and in particular for creating a unified theory of large deviation". |
"Varadhan's work has great conceptual strength and ageless beauty. His ideas have been hugely influential and will continue to stimulate further research for a long time," the Abel Committee said. |
Varadhan was born on January 2, 1940, in Chennai. He studied at Madras University and got a Ph D from the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta. The distinguished Indian statistician, C R Rao, was his thesis advisor. |
During his thesis defence ,Varadhan noticed a visitor in the room whom he did not know and who asked many penetrating questions. After the exam he discovered that it was the famous Russian mathematician and probabilist A N Kolmogorov. |
Rao had arranged the date of the exam knowing that Kolmogorov would be visiting India then in order to present his star student before him and was not disappointed. |
He then went to the Courant Institute for postdoctoral work and stayed there for most of his academic life, contributing significantly to post-war mathematical research in America. |