Sury B
Articles written in Resonance – Journal of Science Education
Volume 24 Issue 5 May 2019 pp 535-546 General Article
On Some of Jean Bourgain’sWork∗
The Belgian mathematician Jean Bourgain was born in Ostendein 1954. After a whirlwind career during which hesolved many deep problems and transformed several areas ofmathematics, he passed away in Bonheiden on 22nd December2018 (the birth anniversary of Ramanujan). Bourgainwas the modern-day equivalent of Leonhard Euler, makingprolific contributions to a wide variety of problems in mathematicsand physics. The Mathematical Reviews cite 511 publicationsunder his name. Such a wide spectrum of work cannotbe described in one article with any justice even if theauthors were to possess expertise in a number of these areas.The breadth and depth of Bourgain’s work can be fathomedfrom the following phrase used in a review by a renownedmathematician Ben Joseph Green; he said, “It is beyond thecapability of the reviewer to give anything like a meaningfuldescription of the argument here, save to repeat the authors’comments....” The review was of a paper that completelysolved Vinogradov’s mean value conjecture in analyticnumber theory. We choose a small assortment of the topics towhich he contributed so deeply and, describe some technicaldetails in rough terms. In the end, we make a brief mention ofhis results in a wide variety of areas (see [3–5], [7–14] for technicaldetails). The topics we dwell on in this write-up includethe so-called Kakeya problem and some striking applicationsto number theory.
Volume 24 Issue 5 May 2019 pp 597-605 General Article
The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) met inBrazil in August 2018 for its quadrennial conference. Duringthe ICM, the Fields Medals and some other awards are presented.In this report, we briefly recount the personages andthe significance of their work.
Volume 24 Issue 9 September 2019 pp 937-940 Article-in-a-Box
Veeravalli S Varadarajan: 18th May 1937 – 27th April 2019
Volume 25 Issue 8 August 2020 pp 1159-1161 Research News
Smooth Jordan Curves Inscribe Every Rectangular Shape
Volume 26 Issue 5 May 2021 pp 595-601 Article in a Box
John Horton Conway: The Magical Genius Who Loved Games
Volume 27 Issue 10 October 2022 pp 1687-1702 General Article
The Mathematical Legacy of Jacques Tits
The 'Erlangen Program' of Felix Klein worked by 'reducing' problems in geometry to the study of their symmetry groups-thereby algebraizing geometry. Jacques Tits's work goes in the opposite direction-he made fundamental contributions to the abstract theory of groups via geometric methods. His geometric techniques apply to not only finite groups, but also to rather diverse situations such as groups defined over the $p$-adic numbers, and to the so-called arithmetic groups etc. Tits's ideas have enriched many of the important advances in group theory and geometry in the last six decades. He designed the theory of so-called 'buildings' which incorporates geometrically the algebraic structure of linear groups. Amazingly, these ideas have also led to applications in subjects like the study of Riemannian manifolds of higher rank that are seemingly remote from the original developments.
Current Issue
Volume 28 | Issue 1
January 2023
© 2022-2023 Indian Academy of Sciences, Bengaluru.