This January 2022 issue of the KIIT R & D Newsletter is devoted to the memory of the great Srinivasa Ramanujan Aiyangar. Ramanujan, who was born into an unknown Tamil orthodox brahmin family in British India and had no formal education in higher mathematics, influenced Professor Hardy of Cambridge University by his sheer ingenious formulation and solution to many infinite series and complicated number theory problems. In six years of his association at Cambridge University with Professor Hardy which was marked by Ramanujan’s orthodox Hindu practices and constantly disturbed by illness, Ramanujan dazzled the greatest mathematicians of the world not only then but even today. His untimely unfortunate death at the age of only 32 is a great loss. We salute this mathematical genius who has made India proud.

In his honour, the Absus Salam International Centre of Theoretical Physics, jointly with Department of Science and Technology, India, and International Mathematical Union, Germany, has instituted, in 2005, the DST-ICTP-IMU Ramanujan Prize for young mathematicians who have done outstanding research working in adverse work environment in developing countries. The award is given in December every year, the month in which Ramanujan was born in a little known village in Tamil Nadu.

The 2021 DST-ICTP-IMU Ramanujan Prize has gone to Dr. Neena Gupta of ISI, Kolkata who is the fourth Indian and the third woman mathematical to receive the Prize.

We devote this January issue of KIIT R & D Newsletter to the mathematical genius Ramanujan and the DST-ICTP-IMU Ramanujan Prize. The Newsletter has two articles prepared by our faculty colleagues of Mathematics—the first related to the life and works of Ramanujan and the second to the DST-ICTP-IMU Ramanujan Prize and the research of Dr. Neena Gupta that earned her the award.

We believe that these short narrations on the life histories and achievements of the great Ramanujan and the award-winner Neena Gupta will encourage many of our students and young faculty members to emulate them and strive to achieve greater heights sheerly through their perseverance and their focused and sustained effort towards achieving quality research and excellence.