... was largely devoted to a single cherished goal: popularising the Buddha's message among his fellow Maharashtrians.

Being the first male child in the direct line after the death of my grandfather, I automatically inherited his soul, nickname, was given his actual name on the twelfth day and though my widowed grandmother's favourite grandson, had to be addressed by her in the indirect discourse necessary for every modest woman of the class, so real was the transmigration of the soul.

He was a thoroughly pampered boy. He would rudely talk to anyone, with little regard to the elders without any hesitation. Mother was much too indulgent towards him. Father was somewhat strict and used to scold him. In addition he was quite short-tempered and stubborn. He would get angry if anyone dared touch any of his things.

Engineering is based upon physics and chemistry, which are qualified as 'exact sciences' precisely because they admitted a mathematical basis. No other discipline unlocked the door to the atom or to the movement of celestial bodies equally well, as mathematics did. Aptitude granted, mathematical research needed the least financial resources of any science. However, I chose mathematics because I could not resist its fascination. Mathematical results possess clarity and give an intellectual satisfaction above any others. They have absolute validity in their own domain, due to the rigorous logical process involved, independent of experimental verification upon which applications to the exact sciences must depend. Mathematics was the language of nature, 'seienlinrum clavis et porta' as Roger Bacon put it.

This was the first of Kosambi's published papers and is a largely pedagogical exercise started while he was a student at Harvard, and polished up after his return to India. In this early work, DDK displays a sophisticated ability to integrate many strands of thought, to generalise observations from one context to another, while retaining sufficient rigour. The mention of quasi-periodic motion suggests that some of these topics were possibly covered in the special course on the many-body problem that was given by the mathematician G D Birkhoff.

The name of Bourbaki first appears in the published literature in this paper. As described by André Weil, the prank was designed to deflate a senior colleague's ego, presumably by demonstrating the greater familiarity that Kosambi had with modern methods and the then current literature.

... he first built up a reputation as a serious mathematician, serious enough that he was elected to the Indian Academy of Sciences by C V Raman in 1935 who also probably nominated him for the Ramanujan Medal of the Madras University in 1934.

Kosambi had himself to thank for all the bitterness that was caused. He was not an amicable person and had many disagreeable facets to his personality. He was short tempered. He would not stand any nonsense and would not hesitate to cut anyone to his size irrespective of his age, seniority or prestige. Many times he would lose his temper for small negligible mistakes and offend others. He took great pride in his intelligence. His intellect was not matched with humility and because of this he tended to underestimate others. In addition he had a childlike impishness and indulged in teasing people. He was also given to using shock treatment to stir people out of their habitual thinking by taking an extreme stand. He would never attempt to interact or mingle with others and if anyone dared to communicate with him he seemed to disappoint them as far as possible.

In the somewhat didactic article DDK elaborates on his ideas for the proper orthogonal decomposition initiated in his 1944 paper, 'Statistics in Function Space' and also on calculating machines. By this time he had tried his hand at fabricating at least one, his "universal" calculating machine, the Kosmagraph ... DDK did not proofread this paper, and thus it is not in the form that he would have wished. The typesetting was cavalier, particularly the equations.

The end was agonising for Damodar. Dharmananda had prohibited even his own family from visiting him. So not only Damodar but his mother too was not near him when the end came. Damodar was much too disturbed during this period of his father's fast unto death. He often expressed his anxiety to his near ones, 'I feel quite helpless; I often dream of Bapu (his father).' The relation between the father and the son must have been quite complicated. Dhannananda must have had great influence on Damodar's growth. However their minds had progressed in two different directions. In addition the hardships his mother had to suffer because of Dharmananda's wanderlust must have hurt him and he might have held a grudge against his father on that account which however never found expression

Of the two proofs given for the crucial Lemma 1.2, the reviewer does not understand the first, which seems to involve more 'hand-waving' than is customarily accepted even in proofs of theorems less significant than the present one. The second proof appears to be erroneous, in that it invokes a sieve theorem under inappropriate conditions. ... The reviewer is unable either to accept this proof or to refute it conclusively. The author must replace verbal descriptions, qualitative comparisons and intuition by precise definitions, equations and inequalities, and rigorous reasoning, if he is to claim to have proved a theorem of the magnitude of the Riemann hypothesis.

Ancient coins have provided much information about the sites in which they were found and about the societies that produced them. They can be made to yield even more information by modern statistical methods

In the last week of June 1966, Kosambi was in Pune discussing novel projects and their planning with his friends. On the 28th of June a complete check-up of his heath was done and he was declared absolutely hale and hearty by his doctor. But the night of the same June 28 proved to be his last. As usual Kosambi was busy reading and writing in his study late in the night. In the small hours of the morning of June 29 he went to bed destined not to wake up ever again. Since he was still in bed late next morning, his near ones hesitatingly opened the door of his room, only to find him dead. He died in his sleep because of heart failure. Four decades of indefatigable incessant striving in research abruptly came to an end.

Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi is usually remembered as a scholar whose passion for the history of ancient India was matched by his admiration for Marxism. Yet his admirers are not limited to those who are either Marxists or scholars of antiquity. Kosambi is quoted approvingly by medievalists writing on Indian feudalism and by historians of modern India on themes that range from forms of popular expression in the 1857 revolt to the advent of colonialism. That he was by profession and training a mathematician rather than a historian makes his work and its influence all the more remarkable.

Kosambi's significance and his contribution as a historian greatly overshadows his reputation and contributions in mathematics. He simultaneously worked in both areas for much of his adult life, and to understand the body of his work either in the social sciences or in mathematics, an appreciation of the complementarity of his interests is essential. An understanding of Kosambi the historian can only be enhanced by an appreciation of Kosambi the mathematician. For those not trained in the subject, the mathematics may itself be subtle and difficult to follow in its entirety, but a knowledge of the intellectual preoccupations, the questions that concerned him, and the techniques and tools at his disposal can help in bringing out the very natural manner in which DDK's mathematics informed and refined his approach to history. In a fundamental way, Kosambi embodied the multidisciplinary approach, channelling diverse interests - indeed combining them - to create scholarship of high order.

Two traits, as an ensemble, distinguish D D Kosambi in his work on Sanskrit not only from the scholars who were his contemporaries, but also from almost everyone since. The first is his search for a method in the editing of Sanskrit literary texts, and the second his search for a theory in the reading of these texts. In the former case, if judged by the practices of editing Sanskrit literary texts in India at the time, Kosambi emerges as a remarkable pioneer, his concrete accomplishments hardly in danger of being superseded anytime soon. In the latter, he is exceptional in the history of Indology for his awareness that the method of philology is always inseparable from a theory of philology, itself produced by a tradition of writing and reading, and from a cultural and political criticism specific to that tradition. If Kosambi's theory has proven to be flawed, we have only come to know the flaws and sought ways to overcome them because he had the courage to enunciate the theory in the first place.

DD Kosambi's investigations into religion in ancient India led him to look at the subject from a point of view that radically departed from the traditional and employ a method of analysis that combined the use of a variety of sources, disciplines, and comparative techniques. A theoretical framework that was new to the study of Indian history supported his reconstruction of the religion of the Indus valley, as well as his explanations for the spectacular rise and fall of Buddhism, and the enduring appeal of the Krishna myths. From today's perspective his work betrays a few blind spots, but it remains largely relevant for the intellectual leap it took in exploring the essential relation between faith and socio-economic factors, and its consciously creative use of Marxism.

Apart from his more popular work on numismatics and genetics, D D Kosambi worked on path geometry, exploring the foundations of general relativity. He also worked on statistics in infinite dimensions, computing, and probabilistic number theory. His whole mathematical career appears as one long clash of values. A rejection of the value of specialisation saw him leave Harvard. The high value he placed on research saw his exit from Banaras Hindu University and Aligarh Muslim University. His attempt to impart real knowledge of mathematics saw him sacked from Fergusson College, Pune. His insistence on ethical and relevant research led to his exit from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research where, too, the diversity of his interests was portrayed negatively, though he continued his mathematical research till the end of his life.

Kosambi has often been described as a genius, a "Renaissance man", a towering intellectual giant and I myself would not have believed that such a man existed if I had not seen him at close quarters. Here I will only attempt to outline the vastness of his intellectual canvas, prefacing it with a short biographical sketch and end by touching upon some facets of his personality. The first two sections are inevitably drawn largely from secondary sources, given my lack of adequate intellectual credentials and Kosambi's general unwillingness to share personal reminiscences or work-related matters with his family.