Meet Prof Neena Gupta, Fourth Indian Mathematician To Receive Ramanujan Prize for Young Mathematicians

Neena Gupta, a professor and mathematician at the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata, has been awarded the 2021 DST-ICTP-IMU Ramanujan Prize for Young Mathematicians from developing countries

New Delhi: Neena Gupta, a professor and mathematician at the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata, has been awarded the 2021 DST-ICTP-IMU Ramanujan Prize for Young Mathematicians from developing countries for her outstanding work in affine algebraic geometry and commutative algebra. She is the fourth Indian mathematician to receive the prestigious award.

Gupta is the third woman to be awarded the Ramanujan Prize, the Union Ministry of Science and Technology said in a statement. The Ramanujan Prize was first awarded in 2005 and is administered by the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) jointly with the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, and the International Mathematical Union. Before Gupta, Indian mathematicians Ramdorai Sujatha, Amalendu Krishna, and Ritabrata Munshi were felicitated with the prize in 2006, 2015, and 2018 respectively.

The prize is awarded annually to an eminent mathematician who is less than 45 years of age as of December 31 of that year, and has performed outstanding research in developing countries.

The Ramanujan Prize committee, comprised of eminent mathematicians from around the world, praised Gupta and said that her work “shows impressive algebraic skill and inventiveness,” according to a statement by the Union Ministry of Science and Technology.

In 2019, Gupta was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology.  

The Zariski cancellation problem is a fundamental problem in Algebraic Geometry. Gupta had provided the solution to this problem, which earned her the 2014 Young Scientists Award of the Indian National Science Academy. Quoting Gupta from an interview she gave to an American university, the Union ministry statement said, “The cancellation problem asks that if you have cylinders over two geometric structures, and that have similar forms, can one conclude that the original base structures have similar forms?”

The Indian National Science Academy described her solution as "one of the best works in algebraic geometry in recent years done anywhere".