Mathematician Krishnaswami Alladi speaking at the book release event in Chennai on Saturday.
| Photo Credit: M. SRINATH

The autobiography of reputed mathematician Krishnaswami Alladi titled My Mathematical Universe-People, Personalities and The Profession was launched in the city on Saturday.

At the event, organised by the Chennai International Centre, Prof. Krishnaswami, who is with the University of Florida, said India was a powerhouse of mathematics and some top centres include the Institute of Mathematical Sciences and the Chennai Mathematical Institute. “The only thing is, when compared to the size of the country and the population, we could use a few more internationally reputed mathematics departments,” he said.

Mr. Krishnaswami spoke in detail about what inspired him to write the autobiography. “My father advised me to maintain an annual diary. I started doing it in 1985, found it immensely useful. Hence, I decided to write my autobiography,” he said, and added that from a young age, he began interacting with some of the world’s leaders in mathematics and physics.

“After I became an academician, these interactions continued as I visited different universities across the world, and I was able to observe these luminaries up close. I could see their human side, and hence, I thought I should record my accounts of them,” he added.

Point plotting on Cartesian plane.

A coordinate system is a set of numbers that allows you to specify the location of a point in some space. The Cartesian coordinates is one such system, which uses a set of three numbers to specify the distance of a point from three perpendicular planes. In general, this system uses N numbers if there are N perpendicular planes, including in higher dimensions.

Say you are looking for a city on Google Maps. You search for it and the app shows what it has found. The way the city is located on the map is with a latitude and a longitude. Similarly, on a plane, Cartesian coordinates use a pair of numbers – one on the x-axis, one on the y-axis – that can be used to locate a specific point on the plane. In three dimensions, the point’s location can be fixed by adding one more number, e.g. the floor of the building you are on.

The French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes created this system in the 17th century. His invention bridged the gap between algebra and geometry and created analytic geometry. The coordinates also have an array of applications in astronomy, engineering, and most other disciplines that involve geometry, including representing spatial data in computer graphics and computer-aided geometric design.