No longer zero

First, it contributed zero. Then, there was Ramanujan. After that, again zero. Until 2002, Indian mathematics could be summed up in three pithy sentences""zero followed by a solitary 20th century genius and not much else. Multitudes of Indians have earned reputations in fields (physics, econometrics, chemistry, bio-technology, information technology) that involve applied mathematics. Few have focused on higher mathematics itself. In the past five years, however, Indian mathematicians have published many significant papers and won several prestigious awards. The latest is the Abel Prize for 2007. The Abel, often dubbed the "Nobel Prize for mathematics", went to Professor Srinivasa S R Varadhan of the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York, "for his fundamental contributions to probability theory and in particular for creating a unified theory of large deviation".

The Abel was founded in 2002 to commemorate the centenary of the Norwegian prodigy Niels Henrik Abel (1802-1829). Visitors to Oslo may recall his semi-nude statue""Abel must be the only mathematician ever portrayed thus. The award, including the cash equivalent of $925,000 (Rs 4.15 crore), comes from the Norwegian Academy of Science & Letters, which also provides the labour pool for the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. It is more inclusive than the Fields Medal, which is restricted to mathematicians under 40.

Three months ago in December, Varadhan himself served on a Committee at the Abdus Salam International Centre For Theoretical Physics, Trieste, to award the 2006 Srinivasa Ramanujan Prize honouring mathematicians from developing countries. That went to Professor Ramdorai Sujatha of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research for her "arithmetic of algebraic varieties". Also in 2006, M S Narasimham, a visiting professor from the TIFR, was the co-winner of the King Faisal Award ($200,000) for mathematical research that led to a breakthrough in quantum chromodynamics. And in 2002, three professors from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur cracked an ancient conundrum, discovering a faster way to test for prime numbers. Modern encryption is based on the discovery and manipulation of large primes. So, the Agrawal-Kayal-Saxena algorithm caused a tectonic upheaval in e-transactions""it made both encryption and decryption considerably easier.

It is logically absurd to claim the existence of an Indian school of mathematics. But the golden age of Indian mathematics is reckoned to be the Gupta era, and one could claim that a modern age of Indian mathematics has now dawned. The breakthroughs have come from researchers educated in India. Many continue working here. The fact that their original work has been disseminated and acknowledged globally, augurs well. Mathematics provides the basic building blocks upon which science and technology are built. It is impossible to predict where an abstract theorem may lead. Many mathematical insights appear to have no practical applications at present. But absolute abstractions can become practically important, even centuries later. Probability theory, for example, was formulated by Blaise Pascal in order to enable better gambling. It also predicts the chance stochastic processes that underpin quantum mechanics. Boole wanted to distinguish logically between liars and truth-tellers""his logic gates are now at the heart of circuit design. An academic and socio-economic environment, which nurtures pure mathematicians, may not always yield monetisable insights. But without having the number on mathematics, it's difficult to make fundamental breakthroughs. If India is developing such a nurturing environment, its much-maligned educational system must be doing something right.