Youngsters should pursue more research in maths: Narayana Murthy

Speaking at the Infosys Prize 2016 function, he said mathematics is a field that doesn't need heavy investments, labs, etc

Infosys co-founder N R Narayana Murthy urged youngsters to take up more research works in mathematics. “One area where India can do slightly better than the countries is mathematics. It is a field where you don’t need heavy investments, labs, etc. It’s time India wakes up and encourages youngsters to do more real research in this subject,” Murthy said at the Infosys Prize 2016 announcement.

V Kumaran, a professor at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, won this year’s Infosys Prize in engineering and computer science for his seminal work in complex fluids and complex flow that finds practical utility in cardio-vascular and pulmonary health treatments. While Sunil Amrith, a history professor at Harvard University, won the award in the humanities stream for his contributions to history, especially on migration and interrelated past of contemporary Asia, Stanford University professor Akshay Venkatesh and Cambridge University economics professor Kaivan Munshi won the recognition in the mathematical sciences and social sciences fields, respectively. Physician scientist Gagandeep Kang won the life sciences award for her research on rotavirus whereas Anil Bhardwaj, director of Space Physics Laboratory at Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, won the prize in physical sciences.

Infosys Prize was set up in 2009 to commemorate the silver jubilee of the information technology firm and is funded by the Infosys Science Foundation (ISF), a not-for-profit trust. Each winner gets Rs 65 lakh, gold medallion and citation certificate.  

“In fact, at least two or three winners said there is nothing closer to this prize in India. Eight years of track record... Many of the previous winners have gone on to bigger and better things. It will take a few years to establish credibility,” said S D Shibulal, co-founder of Infosys and also one of the trustees of ISF.

Infosys Prize winners, over the years, have gone on to win many international accolades. Manjul Bhargava, a Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University who had won the Infosys Prize in 2012 for Mathematical Sciences in 2014 won the Fields Medal, considered the Nobel Prize in Mathematics. Ashoke Sen, who had won the award in 2009, bagged Russian physicist and billionaire Yuri Milner-backed Fundamental Physics Prize in 2012.

Shibulal emphasised on the significance to have the right infrastructure frameworks for research in pure sciences to develop in India. “It will take some more time. It is not a single stakeholder issue to create that kind of a social shift. It will happen when all the stakeholders involved are working towards that call,” he said. “There should be a framework through which many of the innovations can be commercialised.”  

The number of applications, at 252, was the highest so far in the history of Infosys Prize. The year also saw the highest number of nominations this year, Shibulal added.