Mathematician S.R. Srinivasa Varadhan

Srinivasa S. R. Varadhan was born January 2, 1940 in Madras (Chennai), India. He received his B.Sc. honours degree in 1959 and his M.A. the following year, both from Madras University. In 1963 Varadhan received his Ph.D. from the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta. Srinivasa Varadhan began his academic career at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences as a postdoctoral fellow (1963–66). Varadhan has stayed loyal to Courant, where he served as assistant professor (1966–68), associate professor (1968–72), and became a full professor in 1972. Srinivasa S. R. Varadhan is currently Professor of Mathematics and Frank J. Gould Professor of Science at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University.

He was appointed Director of Courant (1980-84), and then came back to serve a second period as Director of Courant (1992-94). His awards and honours include the Birkhoff Prize (1994), the Margaret and Herman Sokol Award of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, New York University (1995), and the Leroy Steele Prize (1996). In 2008, the Government of India awarded him the Padma Bhushan. He also has honorary degrees from Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris (2003) and Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata, India (2004).

Srinivasa Varadhan has been elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1988), the Third World Academy of Sciences (1988), and the National Academy of Sciences (1995). He was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (1991), the Royal Society (1998), the Indian Academy of Sciences (2004), the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (2009), and the American Mathematical Society (2012).