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This month's Goanet operations sponsored by Mrs. Daisy Faleiro ------------------------------------------------------------------------ To sponsor Goanet operations, contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Few Goans have heard of the late Babla Singbal, one of India's distinguished mathematicians. Last year I wrote to Prof. Sivakumar of the Dept of Mathematics at Texas A&M asking if he had details on Singbal and his work, since Google yields so little on the man. I am attaching the email thread below. Warm regards, r -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: request Date: Sun, 4 Dec 2005 10:41:08 -0500 From: Prof Kohur Gowrisankaran <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: N. Sivakumar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> CC: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> References: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Dear Professor Sivakumar, Indeed, I knew Bobla (Vinayak) Singbal very well. In fact, he along with Laurent Schwartz and K. Chandrasekharan were the three who interviewed us in the year 1957 for selection into the TIFR School of Mathematics. Besides, Singbals were our very close friends. His wife Kalindi (a mathematician herself) and myself have done some Mathematics together. My wife (who is a Maharashtrian) was a good friend of Kalindi. Kalindi (after some ten or so years at the TIFR) worked at the Bombay University department in Andheri until her very unfrotunate death while delivering her second baby in the late seventies. Bobla's (one) brother Ranjan was a good friend of mine. He is a medical doctor and we were in Paris during the year 1962-63. Now, coming to talk about Bobla: he was a brilliant mathematician and an extremely intelligent person. It was always a pleasure discussing any number of topics including a large variety of Mathematics with him. Unfortuntely, he was also a cynic and never considered anything that he did 'worthy of publication' and of published very little. However, he was very highly respected by one and all. Apparently Sammy Eilenberg made a remark after spending some weeks with Bobla that 'if I had your talent, I would be publishing a ton of papers every year'. Just think about the following, in 1952, the School of Mathematics took in very few people (I believe two, Raman and Singbal) and they selected Singbal over Shriram Abhyankar! Some ten years ago, some friends of Singbal along with the Head of the Department of Mathematics at a University in Goa, published a small booklet about Singbal when they also instituted either a prize or scholarship in his name. I had given some money in that cause and also have the booklet. I will try to look for it (I moved office a few months ago after finsihing a term of six years as Chair and my belongings are all in boxes and noted sorted out yet!). Others who are likely to throw some light on Singbal include R. Sridharan, S.Ramanan, C. S. Seshadri (all at the Chennai Math Inst) and M.S. Raghunathan (at the TIFR), M.K. V. Murthy (at Pisa), Pavman Murthy and R. Narasimhan (U of Chicago). If I could find something more, I will let you know. I always had a soft spot for Bobla (both because he was brilliant and a good friend and was the husband of one of my closest friends, Kalindi). Gowri K. (Gowri) GowriSankaran Professor Department of Mathematics & Statistics McGill University. 805 Sherbrooke Street West Montreal. Qc. Canada H4X 1C1 Phone: 1-514-398-3841 Fax 1-514-398-3899. ----- Original Message ----- From: "N. Sivakumar" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, December 03, 2005 5:26 PM Subject: request > > Dear Professor Gowrisankaran, > > I trust you are well. I have appended a message received from my younger > brother (who teaches physics at CCNY). He has forwarded a query from a > friend, Dr. Rajan Parrikar, which is quite self explanatory. As I recall > your mentioning that you were at TIFR in the late 50's, I thought you may > some information for Rajan. > > Thanks for your time. > > Best regards, > > s > > -- > **************************************************************************** ** > N. Sivakumar Phone: (979)845-7337 > Center for Approximation Theory Fax: (979)845-6028 > Department of Mathematics E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Texas A&M University URL: http://www.math.tamu.edu/~sivan > College Station, TX 77843-3368 > **************************************************************************** ** > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2005 10:41:52 -0500 > From: V. N. Muthukumar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: N. Sivakumar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: [Fwd: Re:] > > > > -------- Original Message -------- > Subject: Re: > Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2005 20:24:32 -0800 (PST) > From: Rajan P. Parrikar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > I wonder if your brother has heard about the gifted > Goan mathematician Babla V. Singbal (deceased), > who was at TIFR. Very little on him is to be found > on Google (he shows up as "BV Singbal"). I wrote > to the TIFR Mathematics Head Prof. Venkataramana > but haven't heard back. As you can imagine, few > Goans have heard of him and he never makes the > cut in any of the official and non-official catalogues > of eminent Goans. > > > r ____________________________________________________________________________________ The fish are biting. Get more visitors on your site using Yahoo! Search Marketing. http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/sponsoredsearch_v2.php