New Delhi: Professor Neena Gupta, a mathematician of the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata, was on Tuesday awarded the Ramanujan Prize for Young Mathematicians for 2021 for her outstanding work in affine algebraic geometry and commutative algebra.
The prize is awarded annually to a researcher from a developing country funded by the Union Department of Science and Technology, in association with International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), and the International Mathematical Union (IMU).
It is given to young mathematicians less than 45 years of age who have conducted outstanding research in a developing country. It is supported by DST in the memory of Srinivasa Ramanujan, a genius in pure mathematics who was essentially self-taught and made spectacular contributions to elliptic functions, continued fractions, infinite series, and analytical theory of numbers.
Congratulating Gupta on the behalf of Secretary and the Department of Science and Technology, Sanjeev Varshney, who heads the International Cooperation Division at the DST, said, the award conferred to a female researcher will encourage other female researchers all around the world to take up mathematics as their career.
“I am also sure that this recognition will motivate her (Gupta) further to expand research with more noteworthy outcomes in the future. It will also inspire the researchers and young mathematicians not only in our country but in the entire developing world, to undertake research in mathematical sciences,” he added.
Professor Gupta’s solution for solving the Zariski cancellation problem, a fundamental problem in algebraic geometry, earned her the 2014 Young Scientists Award of the Indian National Science Academy (NSA). The NSA described her solution as “one of the best works in algebraic geometry in recent years done anywhere”.
The problem was posed by one of the most eminent founders of modern algebraic geometry, Oscar Zariski, in 1949. In an interview with an American university, Gupta describes the problem as —The cancellation problem asks that if you have cylinders over two geometric structures, and that have similar forms, can one conclude that the original base structures have similar forms?
