The 2013 SASTRA Ramanujan Award was presented to Professor Peter Scholze of the University of Bonn, Germany on Sunday during the International Conference on Number Theory and Galois Representations held at Sastra Ramanujan Centre of SASTRA University in Kumbakonam. T K Chandrashekar, secretary of Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), gave away the award which carries a citation and a cheque for USD 10,000.
Krishnaswami Alladi, Professor of Mathematics, University of Florida, the Award Committee chairperson who read the citation, said the award was initiated in 2005 and given away annually for outstanding contribution by young mathematicians to areas influenced by the genius Srinivasa Ramanujan. He said the award had become one of the most prestigious and coveted ones in the world. The age limit for the award has been set at 32 years because Ramanujan achieved so much in his brief life of 32 years, he said. Krishnaswami said Peter Scholze, who is 25 years old, is the youngest awardee so far.
In the award citation, it is said that Scholze was being rewarded for his path-breaking contribution that lies at the interface 3 of Arithmatic Algebraic Geometry and Theory of Automorphic Forms and especially in the area of Galois Representations.
The citation recognised Scholze’s unusually original Master Thesis and his PhD thesis in which he initiated the theory of perfectoid spaces, the citation added.
‘255 Ramanujan fellowships Rewarded’
At the event, T K Chandrashekar said the board provides Ramanujan Fellowships to persons of Indian Origin doing Post Doctoral research abroad. They could do research in the institution of their choice. The fellows would get a monthly fellowship equivalent to that of an Assistant Professor in IITs for five years and a research grant of `7 lakh. So far, 255 persons were rewarded the fellowships. He suggested the SASTRA Ramanujan Centre to submit proposals to the board to conduct SERB schools on Mathematics. “The board will provide funding for such schools in which 50-100 research scholars could benefit,” he said. He said the two research chairs instituted by the Srinivasan Ramanujan Centre — one on discreet mathematics and the other on Ramanujan mathematics — would be renewed.