Sharadchandra Shankar Shrikhande (19 October 1917 – 21 April 2020) was an Indian mathematician with notable achievements in

combinatorial mathematics Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting, both as a means and an end in obtaining results, and certain properties of finite structures. It is closely related to many other areas of mathematics and has many ap ...

. He was notable for his breakthrough work along with

R. C. Bose Raj Chandra Bose (19 June 1901 – 31 October 1987) was an Indian American mathematician and statistician best known for his work in design of experiments, design theory, finite geometry and the theory of error-correcting codes in which the cl ...

and

E. T. Parker Ernest Tilden Parker (1926–1991) was a professor emeritus of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He is notable for his breakthrough work along with R. C. Bose and S. S. Shrikhande in their disproof of the famous conjecture made by ...

in their disproof of the famous conjecture made by

Leonhard Euler Leonhard Euler ( , ; 15 April 170718 September 1783) was a Swiss mathematician, physicist, astronomer, geographer, logician and engineer who founded the studies of graph theory and topology and made pioneering and influential discoveries in ma ...

dated 1782 that there do not exist two mutually

orthogonal In mathematics, orthogonality is the generalization of the geometric notion of '' perpendicularity''. By extension, orthogonality is also used to refer to the separation of specific features of a system. The term also has specialized meanings in ...

latin square In combinatorics and in experimental design, a Latin square is an ''n'' × ''n'' array filled with ''n'' different symbols, each occurring exactly once in each row and exactly once in each column. An example of a 3×3 Latin sq ...

s of order 4n + 2 for any n. Shrikhande's specialty was combinatorics, and statistical designs.

Shrikhande graph In the mathematical field of graph theory, the Shrikhande graph is a named graph discovered by S. S. Shrikhande in 1959.. It is a strongly regular graph with 16 vertices and 48 edges, with each vertex having degree 6. Every pair of nodes h ...

is used in statistical designs.

Biography

He was the fifth of ten siblings. His father worked at a flour mill. He completed his B.Sc. from Government Science College, Nagpur and went for further studies at the

Indian Statistical Institute Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) is a higher education and research institute which is recognized as an Institute of National Importance by the 1959 act of the Indian parliament. It grew out of the Statistical Laboratory set up by Prasanta C ...

. 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 The University of North Carolina is the multi-campus public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the NC School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referred to as the UNC Sys ...

at Chapel Hill under the direction of R. C. Bose. Shrikhande taught at various universities in the USA and in India. Shrikhande was a professor of mathematics at

Banaras Hindu University Banaras Hindu University (BHU) IAST: kāśī hindū viśvavidyālaya IPA: /kaːʃiː hɪnd̪uː ʋɪʃwəʋid̪jaːləj/), is a collegiate, central, and research university located in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India, and founded in 191 ...

, Banaras, and the founding head of the department of mathematics,

University of Mumbai The University of Mumbai is a collegiate, state-owned, public research university in Mumbai. The University of Mumbai is one of the largest universities in the world. , the university had 711 affiliated colleges. Ratan Tata is the appointed ...

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 National Science Academy (INSA) is a national academy in New Delhi New Delhi (, , ''Naī Dillī'') is the Capital city, capital of India and a part of the NCT Delhi, National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is t ...

, the

Indian Academy of Sciences The Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore was founded by Indian Physicist and Nobel Laureate C. V. Raman, and was registered as a society on 24 April 1934. Inaugurated on 31 July 1934, it began with 65 founding fellows. The first general mee ...

and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, USA. In 1988, his wife Shakuntala passed away and he moved to the United States. Shrikhande returned to India in 2009. He

turned 100 A centenarian is a person who has reached the age of 100 years. Because life expectancies worldwide are below 100 years, the term is invariably associated with longevity. In 2012, the United Nations estimated that there were 316,600 living cente ...

in October 2017 and died in April 2020 at the age of 102.Indian Maths Genius Who Debunked Euler’s Theory, Made it to NYT Front Page Dies at 103
/ref> His son Mohan Shrikhande
/ref> is a professor of combinatorial mathematics at

Central Michigan University Central Michigan University (CMU) is a public research university in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. Established in 1892 as the Central Michigan Normal School and Business Institute, the private normal school became a state institution and renamed Cen ...

in Mt. Pleasant,

Michigan Michigan () is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Shrikhande, Sharadchandra Shankar 1917 births 2020 deaths 20th-century Indian mathematicians Fellows of the Indian Academy of Sciences Indian centenarians Indian combinatorialists Indian statisticians Latin squares Men centenarians Scientists from Madhya Pradesh University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty