T.A. Sarasvati Amma: A Centennial Tribute

By : P. P. Divakaran

Page No: 1-16

Abstract
Sarasvati Amma published very few research papers. All her insights into the Indian mathematical (specifically, geometric) tradition are to be found in her book “Geometry in Ancient and Medieval India”, published in 1979 but prepared as her thesis in the University of Madras 20 years earlier. The present article is, consequently, an evaluation of the mathematics described in the book and of the historiographic significance of its interpretation by her. The book pays specific attention to certain themes: e.g., the key ideas of the geometry of the Vedic period, cyclic quadrilaterals, geometric algebra etc. and, especially, the infinitesimal trigonometry of MÀdhava, all in a style designed to bring out the continuity in their evolution. The case is made in this article that Sarasvati Amma’s work, along with the earlier book of B. Datta and A. N. Singh, marks the founding of an autonomous discipline of scholarship into India’s mathematical past.
 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.32381/GB.2018.40.01.1