‘Today, mathematics is not only necessary in daily life but pervasive’ Premium

Apoorva Khare is an associate professor of mathematics at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. He is recognised as one of India’s leading young mathematicians and is one of the winners of the recently announced 2022 Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prizes (now remodelled as the Vigyan Yuva-Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar award). In this interview, Dr. Khare talks to Mohan R., a mathematician at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, for The Hindu, about his early influences, his unique book Beautiful, Simple, Exact, Crazy, collaborating with maths superstar Terence Tao, and why, and when, prizes matter to researchers.

Apoorva Khare is an associate professor of mathematics at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. He is one of the winners of the recently announced 2022 Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prizes (now remodelled as the Vigyan Yuva-Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award). He spoke to Mohan R., a mathematician at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, for The Hindu.

The questions are in bold. Post-interview additions are in square brackets. The transcript has been edited for style.

What was your immediate reaction upon learning that you had won a Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar prize, which is currently the highest national science award?

I was caught by surprise. The CSIR Director General usually announces the Bhatnagar prizes on the 26th of September, but this time it happened 15 days early. Also, the prizes were not announced at all last year,  so I was very pleasantly surprised to find that I had got the prize. 

It was my student who first told me that I had received a Bhatnagar prize. Within a few minutes of appearing on the official website, it was already reported on various news websites. It was quite surreal.

What was your childhood like? Was maths a big part of it?

I grew up in Bhubaneswar [Odisha]. My parents Pushpa and Avinash Khare are both physics professors and researchers and so all my life I’ve grown up in a science environment, hearing about Einstein or Edison, atoms and galaxies, and so on. But otherwise I would go to school, come home, play table tennis, and read lots of storybooks – Enid Blyton, Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, the usual. I listened to lots of music - both Indian and Western classical, and old Hindi film songs. I also learned Hindustani vocal for seven years, completing my Sangeet Visharad while in school.