K. R. Parthasarathy (graph theorist)

K. R. Parthasarathy is a professor emeritus of graph theory from the Department of Mathematics, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai. He received his Ph.D. (1966) in graph theory from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. Parthasarathy is known for his work (with his student G. Ravindra) on strong perfect graph conjecture. Parthasarathy guided and refereed Ph.D. students in graph theory, among them S. A. Choudum. Parthasarathy wrote a book on graph theory - Basic Graph Theory, K. R. Parthasarathy - 1994 - Tata McGraw-Hill New York.

Early Life

In a face-to-face interview with K.R. Parthasarathy done by B.V. Rajarama Bhat, a conversation about K.R. Parthasarathy's childhood, personal experiences, and interests were addressed and spoken about in detail. K.R. Parthasarathy attended high school in Chennai and then later enrolled in college and attended Vivekanada College to complete a two year course in intermediate studies. Once the two year intermediate course in Vivekanada College was completed, K.R. Parthasarathy went on to enroll in a three year program in the same college. The three year course was a mathematics honors course that was completed in the mid 1950's by Parthasarathy. K.R. Parthasarathy went on to explain a few teachers that were very knowledgeable and taught detailed mathematics, geometry, and even Hamiltonian. When Parthasarathy was completely done with the three year course, he had been introduced to the Indian Stastical Institute in Calcutta. After passing an entrance exam that allows individuals to enroll in the school, K.R. Parthasarathy attended the Indian Statistical Institute Kolkata. Although school and studies took up most of his time in those days, Parthasarathy would often stay on the campus and appreciate the art of music. One interest area for this graph theorist is the quantum information theory, which he was introduced to early on in his life, as this theory was what his career initially started with. K.R. Parthasarathy had even gave a course on the information theory once. Parthasarthy eventually presented his work on the Quantum Stochastic Calculus in the early 1990s which was located at the International Congress of Mathematics. Once K.R. Parthasarthy arrived in Delhi in 2000, a seminar on the Quantum Computation was held and resulted in increased news on different ideas on the quantum computation, which many people had taken attentiveness and interest in. As Parthasarathy continued giving courses on this subject, he eventually wrote a book on the quantum information theory, which he takes great pride in. As he is very fond of different mathematical theorems and has many favorites, but he believes that the Peter-Weyl theorem is simple, which resulted in the theorem being embedded in his head once he had efficiently learned and understood the Peter-Weyl theorem.