Recollections of V. S. Varadarajan

Abstract

Known to friends, students, and colleagues just as Raja, Veeravalli Seshadri Varadarajan (born May 18, 1937) was a mathematician of Indian origin who made foundational contributions to multiple fields, including probability, the representation theory of Lie groups, quantum mechanics, and differential equations. Varadarajan received his PhD from the Indian Statistical Institute in 1960. In 1965, after several visits to the US, he became an associate professor at UCLA. After a long and illustrious career, he retired from UCLA in 2014, remaining active in research, despite declining health, as a Distinguished Research Professor until his death on April 25, 2019. Varadarajan was an ICM speaker in 1974. His international recognitions include an honorary doctorate from the University of Genoa and the Lars Onsager Medal from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He wrote numerous well-known texts and monographs, some published by the AMS, which also published a volume of his selected works in 1999.