Ramchundra

Ramchundra (Ramachandra Lal) (Devanagari,रामचन्द्र लाल) (1821 – 1880) was a British Indian mathematician. His book, Treatise on Problems of Maxima and Minima, was promoted by the prominent mathematician Augustus De Morgan.

In his introduction to Ramchundra's book, De Morgan says that he was born in 1821 in Panipat to Sunder Lal, a Kayasth of Delhi. De Morgan came to know of Ramchundra when, in 1850, he was sent by a friend to work on maxima and minima by the 29-year-old self-taught mathematician. Ramchundra had published his book at his own expense in Calcutta in that year. De Morgan arranged for the book to be republished in London under his own supervision.

De Morgan was so impressed that he undertook to bring Ramchundra's work to the notice of scientific men of Europe.

Charles Muses, in an article in the Mathematical Intelligencer (1998) called Ramchundra "De Morgan's Ramanujan". He was mystified why, in spite of De Morgan's efforts to make this "remarkable Hindu algebraist known, he does not appear in most texts on history of mathematics."

Ramchundra was teacher of science in Delhi College for some time. In 1858, he was native head master in Thomason Civil Engineering College (now Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee) at Roorkee. Later that year, he was appointed head master of a school in Delhi.

References

• C. Muses, "De Morgan's Ramanujan". Mathematical Intelligencer, vol. 20, no. 3, 1998, pp. 47–51.
• Dhruv Raina, “Ramchundra's Treatise Through the Unsentimentalised Light of Mathematics or the Mathematical Foundation of a Cultural Project”, Historia Mathematica, 19, 1992, 371 384.
• S.Irfan Habib and Dhruv Raina, “The Introduction of Modern Science into India: A Study of Ramchundra, Educationist and Mathematician”, Annals of Science, 46, (1989), 597 610; also Habib and Raina, “Vaijnanik Soch ko Samarpit”, Sancha, June July, 1988, 76 83.
• Ramchundra (1859), A Treatise on Problems of Maxima and Minima: Solved by Algebra, London: Wm. H. Allen and Co.