ITIHAS IT Is Happening At SASTRA Newsletter from SASTRA DEEMED UNIVERSITY Vol 19 IV Quarter 2019 MESSAGE FROM THE VICE-CHANCELLOR SASTRA-RAMANUJAN AWARD 2019 SASTRA has made an indelible mark in The SASTRA Ramanujan Award for 2019 was the international scientific community by awarded to mathematician Dr. Adam Harper, Assistant earning the recognition of the Royal Society Professor, University of Warwick, England. The prize at England for its SASTRA-Ramanujan carries a citation and an award of $10,000 and is Award, which it confers annually on young researchers in Mathematics. In its December conferred annually on mathematicians from across the 2019 Special Issue of the ‘Philosophical world, who are less than 32 years of age, working in Transactions’ to commemorate the an area influenced by the genius Srinivasa Ramanujan. Centenary of Ramanujan’s election as FRS, the Royal Society The SASTRA-Ramanujan Award has gained global has commended SASTRA’s effort by publishing a paper titled repute ever since it was instituted in 2005 and today “Ramanujan’s Legacy: The Work of SASTRA Prize Winners”. It is easily amongst the top five awards of this type for is also noteworthy that four recipients of SASTRA-Ramanujan mathematics. Dr.S. Vaidhyasubramaniam, the Vice- Award have gone on to win the Fields Medal. Chancellor of SASTRA University, in his welcome note The 2019 SASTRA-Ramanujan Award was presented to Adam mentioned that many previous winners of SASTRA- Harper of the University of Warwick for his outstanding contributions to probabilistic number theory. Ken Ono, Ramanujan Award, including Manjul Bhargava and the Vice President of the American Mathematical Society, Akshay Venkatesh, have gone on to win the Fields recalled that Harper was the Ph.D student of Prof.Ben Green Medal subsequently. The Prize was given to Adam in University of Cambridge, and that Green was the 2007 Harper in recognition of his Ph.D. thesis at Cambridge SASTRA-Ramanujan Award winner. Similarly, the 2005 award University and his paper in Crelle’s Journal. The prize winner Kannan Soundarrajan’s student won the award in 2017. also recognizes Harper’s brilliant proof of a conjecture SASTRA figures among two other deemed to be universities of Helson, and his ingenious work on S-unit equation. and a State university in the updated list of higher educational institutions released in November 2019 by the University Grants Commission (UGC) for grant of graded autonomy, entitling it to offer programmes through open and distance learning. A special International Year of Periodic Table (IYPT) 2019 lecture was held to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Periodic Table. Under the SASTRA-CNR Rao Award, SASTRA has decided to create Science Labs in as many as ten schools across the state in the name of Professor Rao at a cost of Rs.5 lakh each in its first phase. Our students also continue to astound everyone with their outstanding performances. SASTRA’s Cultural Team stands unbeaten in two decades when it lifted the FESTEMBER Rolling Trophy for a record 21st time. Our School of Law students shine in five contests in different events organized at different places across the country. In the regional round of the fifth Prof.NR Madhava Menon SAARC Mooting Competition, our SASTRA team has qualified to the final international round along with seven other teams. Wish you a promising New Year 2020! Prof. S. Vaidhyasubramaniam Vice-Chancellor SASTRA DEEMED UNIVERSITY ITIHAS Vol 1,9V IQuarter - 2019 SASTRA DEEMEDTOBE UNIVERSITY (U/S3of the UGC Act,1956) THINK MERIT llTHINK TRANSPARENCY THINK SASTRA SASTRA–RAMANUJAN AWARD 2019 Adam Harper was born in Lowestoft in the United Kingdom. He did a four year Math Course at Exeter College, Oxford University and won the Oxford Junior Mathematics Prize. He completed his Ph. D.in 2012 at Cambridge University under the guidanceofProfessorBen Green, and as aPhD..student won the Smith Essay Prize. He wasa Post-Doctoral Fellow with Professor Andrew Granville at CRM Montreal during 2012-13, following whichhewas aResearch FellowatJesus College, Cambridge University during 2013-16. He returned to Montreal in 2018 as SimonsCRM Visiting Professor.Heis currentlyan AssistantProfessorat the UniversityofWarwick,UK. Adam Harper is awarded the 2019 SASTRA Ramanujan Prize for several outstanding contributions to analytic and probabilisticnumber theory. The prizerecognizeshis marvellous 2012 Ph. D. thesis at CambridgeUniversity, and his paper of 2013 in Crelle's Journal in which, among other things, he disproved a widely believed conjecture on the normal distribution of partial sums of random multiplicative functions by novel use of deep probabilistic methods. The prize also recognizes Harper's recent brilliant proof of aconjectureofHelson that the partial sums have better than square-root cancellation using ideas on multiplicative chaos, and arelated paper on higher moments of random multiplicative functions to appear in Algebra and Number Theory. Harper's seminal work using the Riemann Hypothesis to determine the correct order upper bound for the higher moments of the Riemann zeta function on the critical line is an outstanding contribution to the Pield. The prize also notes that Harper proved the upper bound part of aconjectureofFyodorov, Hiary and Keating on the almost always maximum sizeof the Riemannzeta function in short intervalson the criticalline. The prizerecognizes Harper's ingenious work on S-unit equations and related results for these equations over smooth numbers that signiPicantly improves earlier important work of Konyagin and Soundararajan. The prize notes that in his 2012 Journal of Number Theory paper, Harper established certain conjecturesof Soundararajan on the equi-distribution of smooth numbers, and morerecently that Harper has established apowerful Bombieri- Vinogradovtype theorem for smooth numbers. In addition, the prizerecognizes Harper's novelproof of a famous theorem of Halasz, that led to two major joint papers on the “pretentious approachto number theory” with AndrewsGranville and Kannan Soundararajan in Compositio Math. (2019) and Proc. AMS (2018). Finally the prizerecognizes that Harper's fundamental research spans several areas, suchas the large sieve(joint work with Ben Green in Geometric and Functional Analysis (2014)), and on prime number races(joint work with Youness Lamzouri in Probabilityand RelatedFields(2018),and with Kevin Ford andLamzouri to appear in Mathematische Annalen. Harper's path breaking results in analytic number theory using deep ideas from probabilityinnovel ways is havinga majorimpact on thesePieldsand has resultedin an explosionof activity. Theaward of the 2019 SASTRA–Ramanujan Prize to Dr. Adam Harper recognizesabrilliant young mathematician who had made revolutionarycontributions to the Pield of analytic and probabilistic number theory. Place: Kumbakonam Prof. SV. aidhyasubramaniam Date: December 21, 2019 Vice–Chancellor 2 SASTRA DEEMED UNIVERSITY ITIHAS Vol 1,9V IQuarter - 2019 SRINIVASA RAMANUJAN observed that SASTRA-Ramanujan Award has COMMEMORATIVE LECTURE gradually become one of the parameters in marking the intellectual caliber of Mathematical Scholars all Adam Harper, Assistant Professor, University of over the world. He also placed on record the fact that Warwick, England, the winner of SASTRA Ramanujan the University’s initiative has been recognized by The Award for the year 2019 delivered the Srinivasa Royal Society in a paper titled “Ramanujan’s Legacy: Ramanujan Commemorative Lecture on December 22, The Work of the SASTRA Prize Winners.” 2019. He spoke on the topic Probability, Ramanujan and Analytic Number Theory. Probabilistic number theory means the application of probabilistic ideas, viewpoints and methods to solve number theoretical problems. It is generally said to have begun in the work of Hardy and Ramanujan in 1917, who showed that a ‘typical’ natural number ‘n’ always has around log ‘n’ prime divisors. Adam Harper explained this result, and gave an idea of how new probabilistic ideas are influencing work in analytic number theory up to the present day. 17TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NUMBER THEORY Prof. Krishnaswami Alladi, University of Florida, USA, The 17th International Conference on Number Chairman, SASTRA-Ramanujan Award Committee Theory was inaugurated by Prof. Ken Ono, Thomas read out the Citation of Dr. Adam Harper. Dr. V. Jefferson Prof. of Mathematics, University of Virginia Ramaswamy, Dean, Srinivasa Ramanujan Centre, and Vice President of American Mathematical Society proposed a Vote of Thanks. Mathematical Scholars on December 21, 2019. In his inaugural address, he from USA, Canada, United Kingdom and Germany said that research attitude rather than knowledge in presented papers on issues of vital research significance technicalities would help find solutions to several like Mean value theorems, Periodicities for Taylor problems in Mathematics. He hailed the earnest coefficients of half-integral weight molecular forms, efforts of SASTRA for building scientific temper in the The Hardy-Ramanujan-Rademacher formula for student community through conferences of high order. partitions Modular grids, Central limit theorems for He also gave away the SASTRA-Ramanujan Award Sato-Tate sequences, Random walks and random 2019 to Adam Harper, Assistant Professor, University values of polynomials and Asymptotic equidistribution of Warwick, England. In his acceptance speech, of partition. Delegates from Mumbai, USA, Canada, Harper pointed out that the good friendship