Diwan Bahadur Dewan Bahadur or Diwan Bahadur was a title of honour awarded during British rule in India. It was awarded to individuals who had performed faithful service or acts of public welfare to the nation. From 1911 the title was accompanied by a special ...

Raghunatha Rao Ramachandra Rao (c. 1871 – July 1936) was an Indian civil servant, mathematician and social and political activist who served as

District Collector The district magistrate, also known as the district collector or deputy commissioner, is a career civil servant who serves as the executive head of a district's administration in India. The specific name depends on the state or union territo ...

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance in South Asia. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one form or another ...

. He was a member of the

Mylapore clique The Mylapore Clique (also termed an oligarchy, faction, group, set, and cabal), was a small group of politically moderate and elite Brahmin, Brahmins (primarily Tamil Brahmins), — many of whom were noted lawyers, administrators, academics or ...

Early life and education

Ramachandra Rao was born in an aristocratic Thanjavur Marathi

Deshastha Brahmin Deshastha Brahmin is a Hinduism, Hindu Brahmin caste, subcaste mainly from the Indian state of Maharashtra and North Karnataka. Other than these states, according to authors K. S. Singh, Gregory Naik and Pran Nath Chopra, Deshastha Brahmins a ...

family in 1871. He had his schooling in

Trivandrum Thiruvananthapuram ( ), also known as Trivandrum, is the capital city of the Indian state of Kerala. As of 2011, the Thiruvananthapuram Municipal Corporation had a population of 957,730 over an area of 214.86 sq. km, making it the largest and ...

and graduated from the

Presidency College, Madras Presidency College is an art, commerce, and science college in the city of Chennai in Tamil Nadu, India. On 16 October 1840, this school was established as the Madras Preparatory School before being repurposed as a high school, and then a gra ...

Career

Rao entered the Indian Civil Service in 1890 at the age of nineteen. He served as Assistant Collector and Magistrate from 1890 to 1891 and as an official in the Revenue Department from 1891 to 1892. Rao became Deputy Collector in 1892 and Sub Collector in 1898. In 1901, Rao was appointed District Collector of

Kurnool Kurnool is a city in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India. It formerly served as the capital of Andhra State (1953–1956). The city is often referred to as "The Gateway of Rayalaseema". Kurnool is also famous for Diamond hunting as diamonds ca ...

and served till 1907. He served as Registrar of Cooperative Societies from 1907 to 1910. From 1910 to 1914, Rao served as District Collector of Nellore and in the Indian Public Services Commission from 4 to 20 January 1914. Rao retired as District Collector of Madras in 1926.

Later years and death

After his retirement, Rao devoted his time to social and political activities. He organised an All India Exhibition in Madras during the 1927 Indian National Congress session. Rao always wore

Swadeshi The Swadeshi movement was a self-sufficiency movement that was part of the Indian independence movement and contributed to the development of Indian nationalism. Before the BML Government's decision for the partition of Bengal was made public in ...

clothes and was a close associate of

C. Rajagopalachari Chakravarti Rajagopalachari (10 December 1878 – 25 December 1972), popularly known as Rajaji or C.R., also known as Mootharignar Rajaji (Rajaji'', the Scholar Emeritus''), was an Indian statesman, writer, lawyer, and Indian independence ...

. Ramachandra Rao suffered a paralytic stroke in 1930. Following the stroke, Ramachandra Rao was confined to his bed. He died in July 1936 at the age of 65.

Other interests

Ramachandra Rao was a keen mathematician and astronomer and served as President of the Indian Mathematical Society. He was president of the

Indian Mathematical Society The Indian Mathematical Society (IMS) is the oldest organization in India devoted to the promotion of study and research in mathematics. The Society was founded in April 1907 by V. Ramaswamy Aiyer with its headquarters at Pune. The Society start ...

from 1915-17. He assisted mathematician

Srinivasa Ramanujan Srinivasa Ramanujan Aiyangar (22 December 188726 April 1920) was an Indian mathematician. Often regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, though he had almost no formal training in pure mathematics, he made substantial con ...

when he was jobless and got him a clerk's job at the

Madras Port Trust Chennai Port, formerly known as Madras Port, is the second largest container port of India, behind Mumbai's Jawaharlal Nehru Port also known as Nhava Sheva. The port is the largest one in the Bay of Bengal. It is the third-oldest port among the ...

In popular culture

In the Tamil biographical film Ramanujan (2014), actor

Sarath Babu Sathyam Babu Dixithulu (31 July 1951 – 22 May 2023), known by his stage name Sarath Babu, was an Indian actor who worked predominantly in Tamil and Telugu cinema. He appeared in more than 300 films, including in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and ...

played the character Diwan Bahadur R. Ramachandra Rao ICS. The movie itself was about

, one of the greatest mathematicians. James R. Newman, ''The World of Mathematics'',

Simon & Schuster Simon & Schuster LLC (, ) is an American publishing house owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts since 2023. It was founded in New York City in 1924, by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. Along with Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group US ...

, 1956, p. 366: "Srinivasa Ramanujan... who became, as one eminent authority has written, 'quite the most extraordinary mathematician of our time'"

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rao, R. Ramachandra 1871 births 1936 deaths Presidency College, Chennai alumni People from Thanjavur district Indian civil servants 19th-century Indian mathematicians Presidents of the Indian Mathematical Society Dewan Bahadurs 20th-century Indian mathematicians Scientists from Tamil Nadu Mathematicians from British India