K Chandrasekharan's tribute to Ramaswamy Vaidyanathaswamy

The year 1994 marked the centenary of Ramaswamy Vaidyanathaswamy's birth and the colloquium "Mathematics in India" was held on 21 November in Madras. At this Colloquium K Chandrasekharan's tribute to Vaidyanathaswamy was read out. We give a version of this tribute below.

K Chandrasekharan's tribute to R Vaidyanathaswamy

9 October 1994 marked the birth centenary of R Vaidyanathaswamy, who headed the Research Department of Mathematics of the University of Madras for its first 25 years, and who played a leading role in the advancement of mathematics in India for over three decades. He created the consciousness of a cohesive national mathematical community long before India's Independence, through all the years of civil strife and even of war. His influence endures in the work of his many students, and their students in succession (B Ramamurti, A Narasingarao, S S Pillai, K Nagabhushanam, T Venkatarayudu, C Radhakrishnarao, S Minakshisundaram, S Pankajam, P Kesava Menon, V S Krishnan, K G Ramanathan, A Ramanathan, K Padmavally, Mary Thomas, M Venkataraman, C S Venkataraman, M V Subba Rao, and others.)

His achievements are not confined to a few outstanding papers but spread throughout his career, of rigour and development, in the service of mathematics. He modernised the outlook, and widened the perspective, of his colleagues and students as never before. His name commanded respect in all corners of India not just because of his high professional competence and irreproachable personal integrity; he was looked up to as a man of culture endowed with spiritual merit. It is with gladness and gratitude that those of us who had the good fortune to work with him as our leader whisper his name to ourselves on this occasion, as though touched by his presence.

R V was the first Indian mathematician to pursue not just the British but the European and the American tradition of mathematics as well. Although geometry had a special attraction to him, he pioneered in India the study of topology, modern algebra, functional analysis, symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics. Not only the names of G H Hardy, J E Littlewood, S Ramanujan, E T Whittaker, and H F Baker, but those of Hilbert, Poincare, Picard, Hecke, Weyl, Brouwer, Alexandrov, Hopf, Pontryagin, Hausdorff, Frechet, G D Birkhoff, E H Moore, O Veblen, Sierpinski, Tarski, Kuratowski, Banach, Saks, Gödel, von Neumann, Stone, Ore, and Church occurred frequently in his lectures.

New leads and novel directions were thereby opened to every aspiring young mathematician in the (then) Presidency of Madras, and in the (then "native") States of Mysore, Travancore, Cochin, and Hyderabad. It was widely held that the mathematical centre of the region was the city of Madras, and that its University Research Department headed by R V was the high altar, buttressed as it was by the crucial presence of K Ananda Rau, C Racine, and W F Kibble, in the leading colleges of the city.

R V believed in the writing of authoritative treatises to reinforce the indigenous scientific tradition, and set an example himself with his book on Set Topology. (He got S Minakshisundaram appointed - after his doctoral thesis - a research assistant in Topology, for one year, to help with the preparation. I still have a copy of the first version of R V's manuscript, which got polished and expanded, and transformed into the final publication. He intended to write a book on Symbolic Logic as well, and got me appointed - after my doctoral thesis - as a research assistant in Symbolic Logic, for one year, which I gave up, with his consent, after a very short while, to take up a teaching position of somewhat longer duration.)

In his time, he was the editor of the foremost Indian research journal in mathematics, and the moving spirit behind the foremost mathematical society of India, helping to create, at its conferences, opportunities for the young to speak about their work and establish new contacts, and enabling them to publish original work in the journal he edited. something which was non-trivial during wartime.

R V's intellectual interests extended beyond mathematics, into philosophy, epistemology, and psychology, leading on to a spiritual quest (yoga, sadhana) based on a deeply held faith which sometimes seemed to outstrip physical limitations. He was interested in the analysis of the individual psyche, in probing the layers of mental consciousness, in the distinction between auditory and visual thought, and in the Tantric theory of the speech process. In philosophical discussions he preferred to dig into the Vedas rather than popular Puranic lore.

The mathematical mind that lay behind the philosophical peregrinations was instantly recognisable, but his spiritual analyses belonged to another category, because they were based upon individual experience. He was the first editor of Advent, a periodical issued by Sri Aurobindo's Ashram, devoted to the study of the spiritual aspects of life. (I had occasion to attend some of the talks he gave to interested circles.) He once presented a highly original concept of Sarasvati, almost as a mathematical structure, in a lecture at the Presidency College Mathematics Association (when I was secretary) which elicited the compliment "grand" from the chairman, Ananda Rau.

Loose thinking or loose talk, was not for him. He admired delicate craftsmanship in every sphere. He was simple and approachable in manner, but strictly professional at the same time, and avoided every type of exaggerated praise. He was utterly unversed in the art of self-promotion. He was quick to spot a young talent, or a new idea, and ever ready to respond to those who sought his help. He neither expected nor sought any reward for doing what he thought was his duty. This did indeed result in the University's parsimonious attitude to his preferment. He set the highest standard of selflessness in remaining unaffected by that attitude.

Love of learning and breadth of vision characterised every serious conversation of his. He had a passion for clarity in thinking, and brought a freshness of approach to anything he studied. He had a lively sense of humour which bubbled up at unexpected moments. From being a staid, turbaned Professor, in a twinkling he would become a happy young man. You could see the years melting away in his face when he was amused. He was a good mixer. He had the mental make-up of a truly dedicated scholar immersed in intellectual work, at home in the world of ideas.

He was a lover of music and interested in the analysis of musical composition. Dikshitar's kritis in Sanskrit were dear to him, and he delighted in assimilating the particularities of the different ragas with their subtle emotional overtones.

Aware as we are of his vanished being and his unvanished influence, we feel ourselves part of an unbroken stream of consciousness, glimpsing the eternal present, as it were, in which all days and seasons stand in enduring unity.

The felicities of my fag-end years include memories of our sipping coffee together while talking of Weyl, and Brouwer, and Gödel, and von Neumann, in the gardens of Kalakshetra (Madras) or on the lawns of the Bombay Yacht Club, or in a cafe in Calcutta's Chowringhee, completely at ease, but silently and uncomplainingly recalling the lines of Robert Frost:

When I was young my teachers were the old.
I gave up fire for form till I was cold.
I suffered like a metal being cast.
I went to school to age to learn the past.

Now when I am old my teachers are the young.
What can't be moulded must be cracked and sprung.
I strain at lessons fit to start a suture.
I go to school to youth to learn the future.

Those memories induce me, just one of his pupils, a stillness of grateful reverence, and the stillness shall be the dancing.

Last Updated July 2026