Overview of the Work of Kumar Murty

Abstract

The role of the scholar in society is foundational for the growth of human civilization. In fact, one could argue that without the scholar, civilizations crumble. The transmission of knowledge from generation to generation, to take what is essential from the past, to transform it into a new shape and arrangement relevant to the present and to stimulate future students to add to this knowledge is the primary role of the teacher. Spanning more than four decades, Kumar Murty has been the model teacher and researcher, working in diverse areas of number theory and arithmetic geometry, expanding his contributions to meet the challenges of the digital age and training an army of students and postdoctoral fellows who will teach the future generations. On top of this, he has also given serious attention to how mathematics and mathematical thought can be applied to dealing with large-scale economic problems and the emergence of “smart villages”. We will not discuss this latter work here, nor his other work in the field of Indian philosophy. We will only focus on giving a synoptic overview of his major contributions to mathematics.