Skip to main content
Log in

A Conversation with S. R. S. Varadhan

  • Article
  • Published:
The Mathematical Intelligencer Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

S. R. S. Varadhan was awarded the Abel Prize for the year 2007. I met him on 14 and 15 May—one week before the prize ceremony in Oslo—in his office at the Courant Institute to interview him for the Mathematical Intelligencer. My qualifications to interview him were that he and I are Ph.D.’s from the same institute, my Varadhan number is 2, and his was the first research talk that I attended as a graduate student. My major disqualification was that I know little of probability, and I felt like someone destitute of geometry daring to enter Plato’s Academy. Though we had planned to talk for two or three hours, our conversation was spread over nearly eight hours. What follows is the record of this with very minor editing. To help the reader I have added a few “box items” that explain some of the mathematical ideas alluded to in the conversation.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rajendra Bhatia.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Bhatia, R. A Conversation with S. R. S. Varadhan. The Mathematical Intelligencer 30, 24–42 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02985734

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02985734

Keywords

Navigation