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REPORT

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE: JAN 02-05, 2006
“MATHEMATICS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY”

In Commemoration of the Birth Centenary of André Weil
January 2- 5, 2006

-REPORT AND PROCEEDINGS

Mathematical Sciences Foundation organized an international conference from Jan 02 to 05, 2006 at the Residency Resorts, USI premises, Rao Tula Ram Marg, New Delhi. The conference was in commemoration of the birth centenary of Andre Weil, the famous French mathematician, who, as a young professor in his early twenties had come from Paris to India to teach at Aligarh University in 1930. The conference was inaugurated by Prof Deepak Pental, Vice Chancellor, Delhi University at 0930 on January 02, 2006.

The conference was co-sponsored by the Embassy of France in collaboration with the French Mathematical Society. Distinguished mathematicians from France, Canada, China, USA, Australia, Luxembourg, Italy, Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi shared their thoughts on a common platform, and made impressive presentations on the theme of Mathematics in the Twentieth century, interspersed with remembrances of Andre Weil. During the four days of the conference, Indian professors, mathematics research scholars and students also had the opportunity of meeting and inter-acting with the top mathematicians of the world during the breaks for lunch and tea.The conference was very well attended, and attracted the attention of the media.

The list of participants and the programme including the titles of all the lectures and symposia, as well as some of the press-clippings, are attached. Also enclosed is an interesting story on Andre Weil, and his life-sketch.

Quite a few participants came with their wives. The participants and their wives were taken for a leisure-cum-shopping trip to Dilli Haat, and were entertained in the evening at the Habitat World, in addition to a formal conference dinner on Jan 04, 2006 at the same venue. Arrangements for trips outside Delhi were also made by the Foundation on specific requests. All the guests appreciated the arrangements for the conference.

Mathematical Sciences Foundation is headed by its Director, Prof Dinesh Singh, also Director, Delhi University (South Campus), and Adjunct Professor of Mathematics at University of Houston, Texas, USA, and former Head, Dept of Mathematics, Delhi University. ICICI Bank and St. Stephen’s College are institutional members of the Foundation.

Synopsis of the life-sketch of André Weil

About 75 years ago, one of the tallest mathematicians of the twentieth century, arrived in India all the way from Paris.

Born in Paris on May 06, 1906, Andre Weil, greatly influenced by Indian culture and civilization as a result of his contact with Sylvia Levi, a leading French scholar in Indian studies in Paris, came to Aligarh University in January, 1930 to embark upon his professional career in Mathematics. He was a child prodigy, and besides exhibiting an extraordinary talent studying science, mathematics and humanities, he developed a knack for learning languages. By the end of his school education, he mastered English, German, Greek, Latin and Sanskrit in addition to French, his mother tongue. During his two years at Aligarh, he started learning Urdu and Persian also. Weil had a great enthusiastic and ambitious plan for the development of Mathematics not only at Aligarh University but also in the entire country. He had already recruited Vijayaraghavan (a student of G H Hardy), Kusambi, a great thinking young mathematician from Harvard (who later joined TIFR), and had intended to recruit Chawala (the only mathematician from India with whom Mordel had wanted to collaborate in research work, and who finally settled at Colarado University).

Even before he submitted his thesis at Paris, Weil had been expressing a desire to go to India. Syed Ross Masood, while on a vacation in Europe, received a telegram appointing him as Vice Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University. Due to a deteriorating condition of the University, Masood was given unlimited powers to revamp its functioning. Masood also wished that French civilization should be taught in the University, and when he asked Sylvia Levi to suggest someone for the chair of French civilization, she recommended Andre Weil, though he was a mathematician. Weil was offered the position with a princely salary of Rs 1000/- a month. He waited for months, but nothing happened until he received a telegram from Masood, “impossible to create chair french civilization. Mathematics chair open. Cable reply”. Weil’s reply was short, “yes”.

Weil was received well at Aligarh and until a residence was available, he stayed as a guest of Masood, shared his meals and developed a taste for Indian cuisine. Weil’s two years at Aligarh were full of events including University politics, resistance to change from the British system of examinations and teaching mathematics, and criticism for importing French mathematics to India. At the same time, during these years, he made a remarkable progress in mathematical research specially on Diophantine equations, Ergodic hypothesis, particularly the idea of applying Von Neumann’s theory of unitary operators to the problem and conjecturing the Ergodic theorem for the L2 –Hilbert space, problems in celestial mechanics and the theory of complex variables, which could be regarded as a serious spade work that he did to prepare for the landmarks that he accomplished in his later works.

For a young man in his twenties, he had the privilege to meet and interact with famous people, S Radhakrishnan, Rabindra Nath Tagore, C V Raman, S N Bose, Acharya Kriplani. He was close friend of Zakir Hussain, with whom he stayed at the Rashtrapati Bhavan during his second visit to India in 1968, followed by his visits to almost all historical and holiday places from Kashmir to Bengal and the Himalayas to Cape Comorin.

While at Aligarh, he had had made deeper studies of the Mahabharata, whose core is the Bhagavadgita. He acknowledged that he had a re-birth during his stay in India. Hindus believe in purva janma and if that is so, it seems as if Weil was an Indian scholar in his previous life. What else will explain his instant intense reaction when Sylvia Levi gave him a copy of the Bhagavadgita for vacation reading, “the beauty of the poem affected me instantly, from the very first line. as for the thought that inspired it, i felt i found in it the only form of religious thought that could satisfy my mind”. And he would not stop until he had read the book from cover to cover. The book became his life long companion, and even during the most adverse and trying circumstances, he would keep a copy by his side. Most of his crucial decisions in life were taken in the light of his understanding of the teachings of the Bhagavadgita. For example, when the Second World War broke out, he was asked to join the Army. He decided against it and fled to Finland, where he had a miraculous escape from being hanged, and was ultimately imprisoned on his return to France. However, his plea for refusing to join the Army on the grounds that the Second World War was not his country’s war and was actually thrust upon France, and that Mathematics in his country had already suffered because of the First World War and hence not many mathematicians were left thereafter, and therefore his duty was to serve Mathematics rather than Army, was accepted and he was released from prison at Rouen.

Andre Weil, the Yaksa of the famous Meghdoot of Kalidasa, wrote heart-breaking letters to his wife Eveline, describing his life and mental state in the solitude of the prison cell. These letters are so touching and deep in introspection that the philosophy seems to be at its crest. He says that he can hardly assume her by describing the walls of his cell, which are the only landscapes before his eyes. When he is not doing Mathematics, he starts reading the Bhagavatgita and the Chandogya Upanishad. Finding nothing to offer for worship of Krishna, he derives guidance and strength from His message in the Bhagvatgita, “ whoever offers me with devotion, a leaf, a flower or even water, I accept the pious offering by him with love”.

(Based on inputs provided by Prof BS Yadav,Former Head & Dean, Faculty of Mathematical Sciences, University of Delhi)

List of Lectures & Talks

LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

Sl No	Name of Participant

	France
1	Prof. Pascal Chossat
2	Prof. Marie-Francois Roy
3	Prof. J.P . Kahane
4	Prof. Michael Demazure
5	Prof. Jean-Marc Deshouillers
	Luxembourg
6	Prof. J.P. Pier
	USA
7	Prof. John Stillwell
8	Prof. John Hubbard
	Cananda
9	Prof. Ram Murty
10	Prof. Norbert Schlomiuk
11	Prof. Dana Schlomiuk
	Australia
12	Prof. George Willis
	China
13	Prof Zhou Xiangyu
	Germany
14	Prof. Michael Skeide
	India (Outside Delhi Participants)
15	Prof. R. Narsimha
16	Dr. Sachi Srivastava
17	Dr. M. Krishna
18	Prof. V.S. Sunder
19	Prof. Raja Ram Bhat
20	Prof. S.G. Dani
21	Prof. Tirthankar Bhattacharyya
22	Prof. S. Ramanan
23	Dr. Ajit Kumar
24	Mr. Romesh Kumar
25	Mr. Jaydeb Sarkar
	India ( Delhi Participants)
26	Prof. Deepak Pental
27	Dr. Anil Wilson
28	Dr. Dinesh Singh
29	Mr. Ajai Choudhry, IFS
30	Dr. Sanjeev Agrawal
31	Dr. Geetha Venkataraman
32	Dr. Radha Mohan
33	Dr. Amber Habib
34	Dr. Manica Aggarwal
35	Dr. Abhay G Bhatt
36	Dr. Amitabh Tripathi
37	Dr. Saroj Bala Malik
38	Dr. Atul Razdan
39	Dr. L Sahu
40	Dr. Pankaj Jain
41	Dr. P.S. Chakravarty
42	Prof. Rajendra Bhatia
43	Prof. Rajendra Bhatia
44	Prof. V.N. Dixit
45	Prof Bhaskar Bagchi
46	Prof. B.K. Dass
47	Prof. B.S. Yadav
48	Prof. K.R. Parthasarthy
49	Prof. P.K. Jain
50	Prof. Ajit Iqbal Singh
51	Prof. S.C. Arora
52	Prof. S.C. Arora
53	Dr. Ajay Kumar
54	Dr. R.K. Mohanty
55	Dr. Tej Bahadur Singh
56	Dr. Vishnu Gupta
57	Prof. R.B. Bapat
58	Mr. Niteesh Sahni
59	Ms. Sunanda Sud
60	Ms. J. Buvana
61	Ms. Monica Arora
62	Ms. Neha Chawla
63	Ms. Jatin Anand
64	Ms. Divya Beri
65	Ms. Meenakshi Jain
66	Mr. Ziaur Rehman
67	Mr. Vipul Kumar
68	Mr. Manoj Kumar Singh
69	Mr. Anjani Kumar Anjana
70	Mr. Atul Kumar Singh
71	Mr. T.C. Jimmy
72	Mr. Kanhaya Lal
73	Sumit K Sharma, Ph. D student
74	Varinder Kumar, Ph. D student
75	Gurpreet Singh, Ph.D Student
76	Mukund Madhav, Ph.D student
77	Pramod Kumar, Ph. D student
78	Lalit Sharma, M Phil student
79	Naveen Jain, M Phil student
80	Neelima, M Phil student
81	Laxmi, M Phil student
82	Deepti Arora, Research Scholar
83	Mrinal Raghupathi, Research Scholar
84	Sonia Sharma, Research Scholar
85	Anu Yadav, Research Scholar
86	Preeti Upreti, Research Scholar
87	Aarti Jajoo, Masters Student
88	Tarun Wadhawan, Masters Student
89	Vasudha Seghal, Masters Student
90	Amit Chandra Vutha, Masters Student
91	Chinmaya Gupta, Masters Student
92	Ila Gupta, Masters Student
93	Nikita Agarwal, Masters Student
94	T.V. H. Prathamesh, Masters Student
95	Soibam Benjamin Singh, Masters Student
96	Santosh Kumar, Student
97	Indver Gupta, Student
98	Lalit Kumar, Student
99	Ram Krishan Gupta, Student
100	Harinder Choudhary, Student
101	Deepti Gupta, Student
102	Geetha, Student
103	Mukta Jain, Student
104	Nisha Gupta, Student