Sharadchandra Shankar Shrikhande
{{Short description|Indian mathematician (1917–2020)}}
{{Use Indian English|date=April 2017}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2017}}
{{Infobox scientist
| name = Sharadchandra S. Shrikhande
| image =
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| birth_date = {{Birth date|1917|10|19|df=y}}
| birth_place = Sagar, British India (Now in Madhya Pradesh, India)
| death_date = {{Death date and age|2020|4|21|1917|10|19|df=y}}
|death_place = Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, India
| citizenship = Indian
| nationality =
| ethnicity =
| field = Combinatorics
| work_institutions = University of Mumbai,
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill,
Banaras Hindu University
| alma_mater = University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
| doctoral_advisor = Raj Chandra Bose
| known_for = Euler's conjecture
Shrikhande graph
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Sharadchandra Shankar Shrikhande (19 October 1917 – 21 April 2020) was an Indian mathematician with notable achievements in combinatorial mathematics. He was notable for his breakthrough work along with R. C. Bose and E. T. Parker in their disproof of the famous conjecture made by Leonhard Euler dated 1782 that there do not exist two mutually orthogonal latin squares of order 4n + 2 for any n.{{citation|title=Major Mathematical Conjecture Propounded 177 Years Ago Is Disproved|work=New York Times|date=26 April 1959|last=Osmundsen|first=John A.|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1959/04/26/archives/major-mathematical-conjecture-propounded-177-years-ago-is-disproved.html}}. [http://www.cecm.sfu.ca/organics/papers/lam/paper/html/NYTimes.html Scan of full article]. Shrikhande's specialties were combinatorics and statistical designs. The Shrikhande graph[http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/drg/graphs/Shrikhande.html Shrikhande graph ] is used in statistical design.
Life, education and career
He was the fifth of ten siblings. His father worked at a flour mill.{{Cite web |title=Celebrating Sharadchandra Shrikhande, the Mathematician Who Disproved Euler |url=https://thewire.in/science/ss-shrikhande-math-latin-square-euler |access-date=2022-08-27 |website=The Wire}} He completed his B.Sc. from Government Science College, Nagpur and went for further studies at the Indian Statistical Institute. He then briefly worked as a lecturer at the Government Science College, Nagpur.
Shrikhande received a Ph.D. in the year 1950 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill under the supervision of Raj Chandra Bose. Shrikhande taught at various universities in the US and in India.{{citation|url=http://mospi.nic.in/mospi_stat_news_letter.htm|journal=Statistical Newsletter|date=July–September 2003|volume=XXVIII|issue=3|title=Prof. S. S. Shrikhande – An Outstanding Statistician|page=3|url-status=dead|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20080104200217/http://mospi.nic.in/mospi_stat_news_letter.htm|archivedate=4 January 2008|df=dmy-all}}. Shrikhande was a professor of mathematics at Banaras Hindu University, Banaras, and the founding head of the department of mathematics, University of Mumbai and the founding director of the Center of Advanced Study in Mathematics, Mumbai until he retired in 1978. He was a fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, USA.
In 1988, his wife Shakuntala died and he moved to the United States. Shrikhande returned to India in 2009. He turned 100 in October 2017{{cite web|url=https://thewire.in/science/ss-shrikhande-math-latin-square-euler|title=Celebrating Sharadchandra Shrikhande, the Mathematician Who Disproved Euler|publisher=The Wire|author=Nithyanand Rao|date=2017-11-12|accessdate=2018-08-17}} and died in April 2020 at the age of 102.[https://www.news18.com/news/opinion/indian-maths-genius-who-debunked-eulers-theory-made-it-to-nyc-front-page-dies-at-103-2611193.html Indian Maths Genius Who Debunked Euler’s Theory, Made it to NYT Front Page Dies at 103]
His son Mohan Shrikhande[http://www.cst.cmich.edu/units/mth/gradinfo/pp/MTHShrikhande.html M. S. Shrikhande ] is a professor of combinatorial mathematics at Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan.
References
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External links
- {{MathGenealogy|id=47278}}
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Category:20th-century Indian mathematicians
Category:Fellows of the Indian Academy of Sciences
Category:Indian men centenarians
Category:Indian combinatorialists
Category:Scientists from Madhya Pradesh
Category:University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni
Category:University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty