Harish-Chandra

For the character in Hindu mythology, see Harishchandra. For the Raja of the Chakma Circle, see Harish Chandra (raja).

Harish chandra
Born	(1923-10-11)11 October 1923 Kanpur, British India
Died	Princeton, New Jersey, United States
Residence	United States
Citizenship	United States
Fields	Mathematics, Physics
Institutions	Indian Institute of Science Harvard University Columbia University Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Institute for Advanced Study
Alma mater	University of Allahabad University of Cambridge
Doctoral advisor	Paul Dirac
Known for	Harish-Chandra's c-function Harish-Chandra's character formula Harish-Chandra homomorphism Harish-Chandra isomorphism Harish-Chandra module Harish-Chandra's regularity theorem Harish-Chandra's Schwartz space Harish-Chandra transform Harish-Chandra's Ξ function
Notable awards	Fellow of the Royal Society Cole Prize in Algebra (1954) Srinivasa Ramanujan Medal

Harish-Chandra FRS (11 October 1923 – 16 October 1983) was an Indian American mathematician and physicist who did fundamental work in representation theory, especially harmonic analysis on semisimple Lie groups.

Early life

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 master's 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 Pauli's work. The two were to become lifelong 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 16 October 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

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

He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S. and a Fellow of the Royal Society. 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. In 1981, he received an honorary degree from Yale University.

The mathematics department of V.S.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:

He was considered for the Fields Medal in 1958, but a forceful member of the selection committee in whose eyes Thom was a Bourbakist was determined not to have two. So Harish-Chandra, whom he also placed on the Bourbaki camp, was set aside.

He was also a recipient of the Indian civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan (1977).

External links

• Biography by Roger Howe