Foundations & Trusts

A Tribute to Prof. Dr. C. S. Venkataraman

Prof. C. S. Venkataraman (1918–1994), popularly known as CSV, was a Mathematician from Kerala, India. He specialised in the Theory of numbers and his forte was the Theory of Arithmetc Functions.
C.S.V served the cause of mathematics teaching well during his long career as a teacher at Sree Kerala Varma College, Thrissur. He enjoyed teaching to students at lower levels. He motivated his students properly and he was in the habit of drawing illustrations from every day life while introducing new concepts. C.S.V was a member of Indian Mathematical Society ever since 1945. It was C.S.V who represented Kerala at conferences and meetings for a long time. C.S.V took pleasure in pursuing mathematics and in particular number theory. He derived a new identity for multiplicative functions of two variables. Vaidyanatha Swami’s identity for multiplicative functions which appeared in Trans.Amer. Math Soc. in 1931 can be deduced from that of C. S. V..He was awarded PhD degree by Madras university in 1952 for his thesis entitled ‘Contributions to the theory of multilplicative functions’.Dr. A.C.Vasu and Dr. R.Sivaramakrishnan were his doctoral students.
C.S.V’s tenure of office (1947-79) at this college was a golden era of the mathematics department. He didn’t accept principal ship as that would deprive him of his passion to do mathematics teaching. CSV passed away on 16 th of March 1994.
CSV Trust : His children, well wishers and former colleagues have formed a trust in his memory which organizes several programmes to promote mathematics. Prof. CSV memorial prizes are awarded to the toppers of the Regional Mathematical Olympiad (Kerala) . Endowment lectures are being arranged in the annual conferences of the Ramanujan Mathematical Society since 1995.