Donation to Research & Teaching in Math

Donors Veda and VS Varadarajan

This blog likes to take note of donations to UCLA that do not involve brick-and-mortar construction but rather promote research and teaching. Regent-emerita Velma Montoya forwarded the item below:

India-born eminent mathematician VS Varadarajan, wife Veda give $1 mn to UCLA:

The couple want to establish a professorship honouring Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan.

Economic Times of India, 3-7-19

Srinivasa Ramanujan

An India-born eminent mathematician and his wife have given USD one million to an American university to establish a professorship honouring legendary Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. The new position aims to honour the genius Ramanujan, who made substantial contributions to mathematics in the early 1900s. 

The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has received the amount from mathematics professor emeritus VS Varadarajan and his wife Veda to establish the 'Ramanujan Visiting Professorship' in his home department, the university said in a statement. 

The new post will help attract visiting faculty members in Varadarajan's specialisations of automorphic forms, an important concept in number theory, and representation theory, which has been linked to elementary particles and quantum physics...

Full story at https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/india-born-eminent-mathematician-vs-varadarajan-wife-veda-give-1mn-to-university-of-california-los-angeles/articleshow/68301530.cms