Shreeram Shankar Abhyankar

Shreeram Shankar Abhyankar (22 July 1930 2 November 2012 was an Indian American mathematician known for his contributions to algebraic geometry He, at the time of his death, held the Marshall distinguished professor of mathematics chair at Purdue University, and was also a professor of computer science and industrial engineering He is known for Abhyankars conjecture of finite group theory His latest research was in the area of computational and algorithmic algebraic geometryAbhyankar was born in a Maharashtrian Konkanastha Brahmin family He earned his BSc from Royal Institute of Science in 1951, his AM at Harvard University in 1952, and his PhD at Harvard in 1955 His thesis, written under the direction of Oscar Zariski, was titled Local uniformization on algebraic surfaces over modular ground fields Before going to Purdue, he was an associate professor of mathematics at Cornell University and Johns Hopkins University Shreeram was appointed the Marshall Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at Purdue in 1967 His research topics include algebraic geometry (particularly resolution of singularities, a field in which he made significative progress over fields of finite characteristic), commutative algebra, local algebra, valuation theory, theory of functions of several complex variables, quantum electrodynamics, circuit theory, invariant theory, combinatorics, computeraided design, and robotics He popularized the Jacobian conjecture