Early Life And Education

• Komaravolu Chandrasekharan was born on 21 November 1920 in Machilipatnam in modern-day Andhra Pradesh.
• His father Sri Rajaiah Padmakshamma was the school headmaster.

  

• Komaravolu Chandrasekharan attended District Board School in Guntur District, Andhra Pradesh, and then High School at Bapatla, also in Guntur.
• He then obtained his M.A. in Mathematics from the Presidency College, Chennai.

Scientific Research Work

• He was appointed as Research Scholar in the Department of Mathematics of the University of Madras during 1940-1943.
• During 1943-46 he was a part-time Lecturer at Presidency College and obtained his Ph.D.
• Komaravolu Chandrasekharan then went to the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, U.S.A.
• In 1949, while he was in Princeton, he was invited by Homi Bhabha to join the School of Mathematics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.
• He transformed the fledgling School of Mathematics of TIFR into a centre of excellence respected the world over.
• He initiated a very successful programme of recruitment and training of Research Scholars at TIFR. The programme
• continues to this day along the same lines that he set down.
• He put to excellent use his contacts with the leading mathematicians of the world, persuading many of them to visit
• TIFR and deliver courses of lectures over periods of more than two months.
• The lecture notes prepared out of these lectures and published by TIFR enjoy a great reputation in the world mathematics community to this day.
• During 1955-61, he was a member of the Executive Committee of the International Mathematical Union (IMU).
• Komaravolu Chandrasekharan served as the Secretary of IMU during 1961-66 and as President during 1971-74.
• His initiatives over a long period of 24 years on this Committee were numerous and valued greatly.  He served as the Vice President of the International Council of Scientific Unions during 1963-66 and as its Secretary General during 1966-70.
• Komaravolu Chandrasekharan was a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Cabinet, Government of India during 1961-66.

Awards and Other Works

• The Government of India awarded Komaravolu Chandrasekharan the Padma Shri in 1959, Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in 1963 and the Ramanujan Medal in 1966.
• He was responsible for the IMU sponsoring the International Mathematical Colloquium held every 4 years at the Tata Institute starting 1956.
• In the fifties, Chandrasekharan held the editorship of the Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society.
• In 1965 he left TIFR and moved to Eidgerossische Technische Hochschule, Zurich.
• He worked in the fields of number theory and summability. His mathematical achievements are first rate, but his contribution to Indian mathematics has been even greater.
• He died on 13 April 2017 in Zurich at the age of 96 years.