Bhama Srinivasan facts for kids

Bhama Srinivasan was born on April 22, 1935. She is a famous mathematician. She is known for her important work in a field called representation theory of finite groups. This area of math helps us understand how groups of numbers or objects behave.

Her amazing contributions to mathematics were recognized with a special award called the 1990 Noether Lecture. She also led the Association for Women in Mathematics as its president from 1981 to 1983. This group supports women in math.

Srinivasan earned her highest degree, a Ph.D., in 1959. Her main research paper was about "Problems on Modular Representations of Finite Groups." She completed this work at the University of Manchester with her advisor, J. A. Green. Today, she is a retired professor from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has guided five students to get their own Ph.D. degrees. She also wrote many math papers with another mathematician named Paul Fong.

Early Life and Education

Bhama Srinivasan was born in Madras, India. She went to the University of Madras for her college studies. She earned her first degree in 1954 and her master's degree in 1955. After that, she traveled to England to continue her studies and get her Ph.D.

She stayed in England to start her career. From 1960 to 1964, she taught mathematics at the University of Keele. Then, she moved to Canada for a special research position at the University of British Columbia from 1965 to 1966. She later returned to India. From 1966 to 1970, she taught at the Ramanujan Institute of Mathematics, which was part of her old university in Madras.

Her Career in Mathematics

After teaching in India, Srinivasan moved to the United States. She taught at Clark University in Massachusetts for ten years. In 1977, she became a citizen of the United States. That same year, she was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. This is a place where top researchers go to work on big ideas.

In 1980, she started teaching at the University of Illinois in Chicago. She became a full professor of mathematics there. Throughout her career, Srinivasan has been a leader in her field. In 1979, she gave a special talk called an American Mathematical Society (AMS) Invited Address. She spoke about "Representations of classical groups" at a big math meeting.

She was also invited to be a visiting professor in other countries. She taught temporarily at universities in Paris, Germany, Australia, and Japan. Srinivasan also helped edit several math journals. These are like magazines where new math discoveries are published. She worked on Proceedings of the AMS, Communications in Algebra, and Mathematical Surveys and Monographs. From 1991 to 1994, she was on a committee for the AMS that helped decide which articles to publish.

Srinivasan worked with Paul Fong on special math groups called groups of the Lie type. Their work was connected to research on quantum groups. This meant her math research even had links to physics! Even though she loved math for its own sake, she found it exciting when her work could be used in other areas like physics.

Awards and Special Honors

Bhama Srinivasan has received many awards for her important work. In 2012, she became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. This is a special honor for mathematicians. In 2017, she was chosen as a fellow of the Association for Women in Mathematics. She was part of the very first group to receive this honor.

She is also featured in a special deck of playing cards. These cards show notable women mathematicians. The Association of Women in Mathematics published them to celebrate women in math.

Selected Works