MUMBAI, INDIA, August 24, 2017 (Lokvani by K. Arvind): Prof. K. Ramasubramanian from IIT, Mumbai, delivered a lecture titled “Glimpses of Indian Mathematics: Sutra Style to Paragon of Poetry” at MIT on Sunday, August 13, 2017. In this talk, Prof. K. Ramasubramanian offered an illuminating view of Indian Mathematics over the ages, its unique approach based on poetry rather than prose, the need for such an approach, and presented many surprising facts about mathematical results ranging from algebra and trigonometry through calculus, that were discovered in India much before the West.
For example, Fibonacci numbers are described in Bharata’s Natya Shastra. Prof. Ramasubramanian mostly used the work of Pingala (prior to 300 BCE), Bhaskara (12th century CE) and Nityananda (17th century CE), mathematicians from three different periods of history to illustrate his ideas. It was fascinating as well as amusing to learn how complex ideas in Math were taught and transmitted over the millennia via the medium of delightful poetry, in effect giving a musical character to Mathematics.
Highlights from the talk can be read at “source” above.