Mangala Narlikar facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Mangala Narlikar
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Narlikar in 2017
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| Born |
Mangala Rajwade
17 May 1943 Bombay, Bombay Province, British India
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| Died | 17 July 2023 (aged 80) Pune, Maharashtra, India
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| Alma mater | University of Bombay |
| Occupation | Mathematician |
| Spouse(s) |
Jayant Narlikar
(m. 1966) |
| Children | 3 |
Mangala Narlikar (born May 17, 1943 – died July 17, 2023) was a brilliant Indian mathematician. She loved studying advanced math and also enjoyed writing books to make math easier for everyone to understand. After finishing her math degrees, she worked at important research centers and taught at universities in India.
Her Life Story
Mangala Narlikar was born as Mangala Rajwade on May 17, 1943, in a city then called Bombay, in British India. She was a very bright student. At the University of Bombay, she earned her B.A. in Maths in 1962 and her M.A. in Maths in 1964. She was the top student in her class and even won a special gold medal!
In 1966, she married Jayant Narlikar, who is a famous scientist known for studying the universe. They had three daughters: Geeta, Girija, and Leelavati. All three of their daughters grew up to have careers in science, too! Geeta became a professor of biochemistry, and her other two daughters work in computer science.
From 1964 to 1966, Mangala Narlikar worked as a researcher at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai. She also taught college students at the University of Cambridge in England from 1967 to 1969. Later, she returned to TIFR to continue her research.
Even after getting married, she kept studying. She earned her Ph.D. in mathematics in 1981, focusing on a field called analytic number theory. This was 16 years after her marriage! She continued to work at TIFR and taught advanced math classes at the University of Bombay and the University of Pune.
Mangala Narlikar was interested in many areas of math. These included real and complex analysis, geometry, number theory, and algebra. She once said she enjoyed writing books that made mathematics interesting and easy to understand. She also shared that her life story showed how many educated women of her time balanced their careers with family duties.
Mangala Narlikar passed away on July 17, 2023, at the age of 80.
Her Books and Papers
Mangala Narlikar wrote many scientific papers and books. She especially enjoyed writing for people who weren't math experts.
Scientific Papers
She published several papers in math journals, including:
- Theory of Sieved Integers
- On a theorem of Erdos and Szemeredi
- On the Mean Square Value theorem of Hurwitz Zeta function
- Hybrid mean Value Theorem of L-functions
- On orders solely of Abelian Groups
- She also wrote articles about math for a magazine called Science Age. Her goal was to make math exciting for everyone.
Books for Everyone
Mangala Narlikar wrote books to help young people and others learn math easily:
- Ganitachyaa Sopya Vata: This book was written in Marathi, a language spoken in India, for schoolchildren.
- An Easy Access to Basic Mathematics: Another book aimed at helping schoolchildren understand math.
- A Cosmic Adventure: This was her translation of a book about astronomy written by Professor J. V. Narlikar.
