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Lack of PhD research funding wasting India’s mathematical talent: Princeton University prof
The conference, the first of its kind in India, was inaugurated on Monday at SPPU’s Swarajya Rakshak Dharmaveer Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj Auditorium. The ceremony was attended by eminent mathematicians and academic leaders from India and abroad.
Pune: The five-day Indo-European Conference on Mathematics being held at Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU) from Monday will play a crucial role in shaping future international collaborative research, according to professor at Princeton University, USA, Manjul Bhargava, a Padma Bhushan awardee. Drawing a historical parallel with the collaboration between Srinivasa Ramanujan and G.H. Hardy that proved to be globally transformative, Prof Bhargava said international academic engagements like the conference being held at Pune are vital for the advancement of mathematics.
The conference, the first of its kind in India, was inaugurated on Monday at SPPU’s Swarajya Rakshak Dharmaveer Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj Auditorium. The ceremony was attended by eminent mathematicians and academic leaders from India and abroad.
Underscoring the importance of building collaborations, Prof Bhargava said, “If we don’t have them, then mathematical communities will be working in isolation. When mathematicians actually meet and talk to each other, they learn each other’s mathematics much faster than they do if they’re just reading each other’s papers.”
At the same time, he highlighted the neglect of research in universities. “Hardly any research is conducted at most state universities. Research is not even part of the job description,” he said, calling it a massive waste of talent.
Senior mathematician R. Balasubramanian from Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai stressed that while collaboration among mathematicians within departments exists, India significantly lacks meaningful interaction between mathematicians and those who apply mathematics across disciplines.
On why India produces few Fields Medalists or Nobel laureates, Balasubramanian cautioned against focusing on individual brilliance alone. “Unless the average level of scholarship, inquisitiveness, and research production goes up, you cannot expect one person to suddenly come up,” he said. “Forget about Fields Medalists. How many people have we produced who can even understand the work of a Fields Medalist? That number itself is very low.”
He stressed that aiming only for top awards reflects misplaced priorities. “Instead of bothering about why we are not getting a Fields Medal, the whole idea is how to improve the general level,” he said.
