Ramchundra (Ramachandra Lal) (

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; in script: , , ) is an Indic script used in the Indian subcontinent. It is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental systems: alphabets, writing system), based on the ancient ''Brāhmī script, Brā ...

,रामचन्द्र लाल) (c. 1821–1880) was a

British Indian British Indians are citizens of the United Kingdom (UK) whose ancestral roots are from India. Currently, the British Indian population exceeds 2 million people in the UK, making them the single largest Ethnic groups in the United Kingdo ...

mathematician. His book, ''Treatise on Problems of Maxima and Minima'', was promoted by mathematician

Augustus De Morgan Augustus De Morgan (27 June 1806 – 18 March 1871) was a British mathematician and logician. He is best known for De Morgan's laws, relating logical conjunction, disjunction, and negation, and for coining the term "mathematical induction", the ...

. Writing in his preface to the treatise, De Morgan states that Ramchundra was born in about 1821 in

Panipat Panipat () is an industrial , located 95 km north of Delhi and 169 km south of Chandigarh on NH-44 in Panipat district, Haryana, India. It is famous for three major battles fought in 1526, 1556 and 1761. The city is also known as ...

to Sunder Lal, a Kayasth of Delhi. He came to De Morgan’s attention when, in 1850, a friend sent him Ramchundra’s work on

maxima and minima In mathematical analysis, the maximum and minimum of a function are, respectively, the greatest and least value taken by the function. Known generically as extremum, they may be defined either within a given range (the ''local'' or ''relative ...

. The 29-year-old self-taught mathematician had published the book at his own expense in

Calcutta Kolkata, also known as Calcutta (List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, its official name until 2001), is the capital and largest city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal. It lies on the eastern ba ...

in that year. De Morgan was so impressed that he arranged for the book to be republished in London under his own supervision, and in general undertook to bring Ramchundra's work to the notice of the broader European scientific community. Quoting De Morgan, from the preface of the treatise: Charles Muses, in an article in the '' Mathematical Intelligencer'' (1998) called Ramchundra "De Morgan's Ramanujan". He was mystified why, in spite of De Morgan's efforts to make this "remarkable Hindu algebraist known, he does not appear in most texts on history of mathematics. He is also known for his great ability to calculate." Ramchundra was teacher of science in Delhi College for some time. In 1858, he was native head master in Thomason Civil Engineering College (now Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee) at

Roorkee Roorkee (Rūṛkī; ) is a city and Municipal Corporations in India, municipal corporation in the Haridwar district of the state of Uttarakhand, India. It is from Haridwar, the district headquarters. It is spread over a flat terrain under the ...

. Later that year, he was appointed head master of a school in Delhi.

References

* C. Muses, "De Morgan's Ramanujan". ''Mathematical Intelligencer'', vol. 20, no. 3, 1998, pp. 47–51. * Dhruv Raina, "Ramchundra's Treatise Through the Unsentimentalised Light of Mathematics or the Mathematical Foundation of a Cultural Project", Historia Mathematica, 19, 1992, 371 384. * S.Irfan Habib and Dhruv Raina, "The Introduction of Modern Science into India: A Study of Ramchundra, Educationist and Mathematician", Annals of Science, 46, (1989), 597 610; also Habib and Raina, "Vaijnanik Soch ko Samarpit", Sancha, June July 1988, 76 83. * {{Authority control Mathematicians from British India 1820s births 1880 deaths Scientists from Haryana People from Panipat