It's on a day like this you get upset with the Indian media.
Mathematician C S Seshadri passed away last night. The most casually used word 'genius' deserves to sit alongside his name. He well and truly belongs to the Indian mathematical lineage of Ramanujan.
Mathematician C S Seshadri passed away last night. The most casually used word 'genius' deserves to sit alongside his name. He well and truly belongs to the Indian mathematical lineage of Ramanujan.
As his primary subject was algebraic geometry --- one that is beyond the ken of us ordinary people --- his greatness cannot be truly understood by many of us.
But, among others, he is a "Fellow of Royal Society", has a theorem named after him (jointly, the Narasimhan-Seshadri Theorem), & there is a 'Seshadri Constant', too. Even without knowing much maths, you can easily deduce that he must have been a towering figure in his field.
Also, he was the founding director of Chennai Mathematical Institute, one of the pre-eminent institutes in India.
But apart from warm and involved mentions on Twitter, there is still no news of Seshadri's death in mainstream media (am going by Google search), and there has been no mention in the TV news as well.
If a person's death deserves to be in main news, it is Seshadri's. He is that kind of an intellectual giant. If only persons like him are celebrated & remembered, our youngsters will be inspired to take up science & maths in their true spirit (and not just as a means to a job).
Even without getting technical about his achievements (which in any case only scholars are capable of explaining), mainstream media can still write (or show) a lot about him. And the man was certainly an interesting personality without any forbidding airs about him.
I'm sure publications like Hindu, ToI will write about him tomorrow (the news of his death emerged very late in the night). But it is when TV news present it, and involved obits emerge, does the world begin to grasp or get a sense of a person's true value.
More than English channels, if regional television in Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, Hindi et al can do a small feature (even 5 mins would do) on him it would be appropriate. Quite simply, get a top mathematician or two to tell what Seshadri (and his ability) was.
It would be a great service to maths and the man. They both deserve that. (End).
