Harish-Chandra FRS^[1] (Harish Chandra Mehrotra; 11 October 1923 – 16 October 1983) was an Indian mathematician, who did fundamental work in representation theory, especially Harmonic analysis on semisimple Lie groups.^[2][3][4]

Life[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Harish-Chandra was born in Kanpur (then Cawnpore), British India. He was educated at B.N.S.D. College, Kanpur, and at the University of Allahabad. After receiving his masters degree in Physics in 1943, he moved to the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore for further studies in theoretical physics and worked with Homi J. Bhabha.

In 1945, he moved to University of Cambridge, Cambridge and worked as a research student under Paul Dirac. While at Cambridge, he attended lectures by Wolfgang Pauli, and during one of them pointed out a mistake in Paul's work. The two were to become life long friends. During this time he became increasingly interested in mathematics. At Cambridge he obtained his PhD in 1947.

When Dirac visited Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, U.S.A. in 1947/48 he brought Harish-Chandra as his assistant. It was at this stage that Harish-Chandra decided to change over from physics to mathematics.

He was a faculty member at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey from 1963.

From 1968, until his death in 1983, he was IBM von Neumann Professor in the School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey.

He died of a heart attack while on an evening walk on October 16, 1983, during a conference in Princeton in honour of Armand Borel's 60th birthday. A similar conference for his 60th birthday, scheduled for the following year, instead became a memorial conference. He is survived by his wife, Lalitha (Lily), and his daughters Premala (Premi), and Devaki.

Work in mathematics[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

He was influenced by the mathematicians Hermann Weyl and Claude Chevalley. From 1950 to 1963 he was at the Columbia University and worked on representations of semisimple Lie groups. During this period he established as his special area the study of the discrete series representations of semisimple Lie groups, which are analogues of the Peter–Weyl theory in the non-compact case.

He is also known for work with Armand Borel on the theory of arithmetic groups; and for papers on finite group analogues. He enunciated a philosophy of cusp forms, a precursor of the Langlands philosophy.

Honors and awards[link]

He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S. and a Fellow of the Royal Society. ^[1] He was the recipient of the Cole Prize of the American Mathematical Society, in 1954. The Indian National Science Academy honoured him with the Srinivasa Ramanujan Medal in 1974.

The mathematics department of B.N.S.D. College, Kanpur celebrates his birthday every year in different forms, which includes lectures from students and professors from various colleges, institutes and students' visit to Harish-Chandra Research Institute.

The Indian Government named the Harish-Chandra Research Institute, an institute dedicated to Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, after him.

Robert Langlands wrote in a biographical article of Harish-Chandra:

See also[link]

• Harish-Chandra's c-function
• Harish-Chandra's character formula for discrete series representations
• Harish-Chandra homomorphism
• Harish-Chandra isomorphism identifying the center of the universal enveloping algebra with polynomial invariants of the Weyl group.
• Harish-Chandra module
• Harish-Chandra's regularity theorem implying that the character of an irreducible representation is locally integrable
• Harish-Chandra's Schwartz space
• Harish-Chandra transform
• Harish-Chandra's Ξ function

References[link]

Publications[link]

• Harish-Chandra (1968), Mars, J. G. M., ed., Automorphic forms on semisimple Lie groups, Lecture Notes in Mathematics, 62, Berlin, New York: Springer-Verlag, DOI:10.1007/BFb0098434, ISBN 978-3-540-04232-7, MR0232893 
• Harish-Chandra (1970), Dijk, G. van, ed., Harmonic analysis on reductive p-adic groups, Lecture Notes in Mathematics, 162, Berlin, New York: Springer-Verlag, DOI:10.1007/BFb0061269, ISBN 978-3-540-05189-3, MR0414797 
• Harish-Chandra (1984), Varadarajan, V. S., ed., Collected papers. Vol. I. 1944–1954., Berlin, New York: Springer-Verlag, ISBN 978-0-387-90782-6, MR726025, http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0387907823 
• Harish-Chandra (1984), Varadarajan, V. S., ed., Collected papers. Vol. II 1955–1958., Berlin, New York: Springer-Verlag, ISBN 978-0-387-90782-6, MR726025 
• Harish-Chandra (1984), Varadarajan, V. S., ed., Collected papers. Vol. III 1959–1968., Berlin, New York: Springer-Verlag, ISBN 978-0-387-90782-6, MR726025, http://books.google.com/books?id=CtvuAAAAMAAJ 
• Harish-Chandra (1984), Varadarajan, V. S., ed., Collected papers. Vol. IV 1970–1983., Berlin, New York: Springer-Verlag, ISBN 978-0-387-90782-6, MR726025, http://books.google.com/books?id=vFGHSQAACAAJ 
• Harish-Chandra (1999), DeBacker, Stephen; Sally, Paul J., eds., Admissible invariant distributions on reductive p-adic groups, University Lecture Series, 16, Providence, R.I.: American Mathematical Society, ISBN 978-0-8218-2025-4, MR1702257, http://books.google.com/books?id=QhweZD8wGHEC 

Bibliography[link]

• Doran, Robert S.; Varadarajan, V. S., eds. (2000), "The mathematical legacy of Harish-Chandra", Proceedings of the AMS Special Session on Representation Theory and Noncommutative Harmonic Analysis, held in memory of Harish-Chandra on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of his birth, in Baltimore, MD, January 9--10, 1998, Proceedings of Symposia in Pure Mathematics, 68, Providence, R.I.: American Mathematical Society, pp. xii+551, ISBN 978-0-8218-1197-9, MR1767886, http://books.google.com/books?id=mk-4pl9IftMC 
• Srivastava, R. S. L. (1986), "About Harish Chandra", Gaṇita Bhãrati. Indian Society for History of Mathematics. Bulletin 8 (1): 42–43, ISSN 0970-0307, MR888666 
• Varadarajan, V. S. (2008), "Harish-Chandra", Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Harish-Chandra.aspx 

Saridey Varalakshmi, popularly known as Telugu: ఎస్. వర లక్ష్మిS. Varalakshmi (13 August 1925 - 22 September 2009) was a veteran Telugu and Tamil actress and singer. She was popular for her roles and songs in Telugu movies like Mahamantri Timmarasu and Sri Venkateswara Mahatyam and Tamil movies like Veerapandiya Kattabomman and Savale Samali.

Life[link]

Varalakshmi was born in Jaggampeta, Andhra Pradesh, India. She started her career as child artist in saint role in Balayogini (1937), when she was nine years old. Gudavalli Ramabramham was engaged by the pioneer filmmaker K. Subrahmanyam to direct the Telugu version of this movie. He spotted young Varalakshmi in Kurnool. Subramanyam later cast her in his classic Seva Sadanam (1938) with M. S. Subbulakshmi.^[1] She played a young friend of the heroine (M.S.), and they became close friends. She played a young girl’s role in Parasuraman (Tamil, 1940) along with T. R. Mahalingam. T. R. Sundaram, cast her in a major role in his box office hit ‘Aayiram Thalai Vaangi Apoorva Chinthamani’ (1947). The title role was played by V. N. Janaki. The film was a major success and Govindan and Varalakshmi made an attractive pair. T. R. Sundaram cast her again in the lead role in ‘Bhojan’ (1948). Her first successful movie was Balaraju in 1948 produced and directed by Ghantasala Balaramaiah. She later acted with all top heroes in Telugu and Tamil industries including Sivaji Ganesan (Veerapandiya Kattabbomman), M. G. Ramachandran (Chakravarthi Thirumagal, Maattukara Velan, Needhikku Thalaivanangu), Gemini Ganesan (Poova Thalaiya), N. T. Rama Rao (Lava Kusha), A. Nageswara Rao(ANR) (Balaraju), Chittor V. Nagaiah (Naga Panchami), Ranjan (En Magan) and R. S. Manohar (Maamiyaar). She was also famous for her voice, and sung her songs in all movies she acted. Her roles as Sivaji's wife in Veerapandiya Kattabomman, and important roles in Poova Thalaiyaa, Savale Samali, Maattukkara Velan, Raja Raja Chozhan and Neethikku thalaivanangu won her critical acclaim as a talented singer and actress in Tamil movies. In her later career, she acted in mother and aunt roles. She married film producer A. L. Srinivasan and has two children. She continued to act after marriage in senior roles in Telugu and Tamil cinema.

Death[link]

Varalakshmi was bedridden during the last 6 months of her life after she fell and injured her back. She died on 22 September 2009.^[2]

Honors and awards[link]

She has received several awards commending her service to Tamil cinema. The most recent ones were:

1. Sivaji Ganesan Memorial Award Presented by the Sivaji Family in Oct 2007
2. Kavignar Kannadasan Award presented by the Tamil Nadu Government in 2004

Filmography[link]

Note: The lists are not comprehensive.

Actress[link]

Singer[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• S. Varalakshmi at the Internet Movie Database