The birth centenary of the eminent physicist Alladi Ramakrishnan, was founded MATSCIENCE, The Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc), in Chennai on 3rd January, 1962, and served as its Director until his retirement in 1983 at the age of sixty.
The Institute will pay homage to its visionary Founder-Director, by conducting The Alladi Ramakrishnan Centenary Conference during December 16-18, 2023 at its campus in Taramani, Chennai. In addition to scientific talks by leading researchers from across the world, the conference will also feature interactions with industry leaders, institution builders and science policy makers in the Indian context. On that occasion, a bust of Professor Ramakrishnan will also be unveiled at the Institute. Other ways to commemorate Professor Ramakrishnan's legacy are also being planned.
Inspired by the more than one hundred seminars on modern physics that he heard during his visit to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1957-58 at the invitation of its Director Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, Professor Ramakrishnan, on his return to Madras started a theoretical Physics Seminar in his family home Ekamra Nivas. For that seminar, he regularly invited physicists and mathematicians of world renown to lecture to the eager students who gathered around him to do their PhD. One such visitor, Nobel Laureate Niels Bohr, who touring India in 1960 as the guest of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, said at a press meeting at the conclusion of his tour that two things impressed him the most - the massive set up of the Tata Institute directed by Prof. Homi Bhabha in Bombay, and the small band of students trained by Prof. Ramakrishnan in Madras! That prompted the Prime Minister to meet Prof. Ramakrishnan and his students at the Raj Bhavan in Chennai on 8th October, 1961. Within two months, the Institute of Mathematical Sciences was inaugurated.
In the six decades since its founding in 1962, the Institute has grown from its humble beginnings with just three rooms at the Presidency College in Madras and a very modest budget, to a leading research institution with an international reputation and a multi-crore budget.