Dr. Mathukumalli Venkata
Subbarao
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Dr. Mathukumalli Venkata
Subbarao was a practitioner of number theory, a
mathematician who had explored the intricacies of this subject with
unswerving loyalty for close to 60 years.
Dr. Subbarao was born on May 4, 1921, in the village
of Yazali
in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India.
As there was no school in the village, he was taught at home by his father,
M. Narasimha Rao,
during his elementary level education. His mother, M. Venkata
Subbamma, then accompanied him as he left home
for the rest of his education -- to the city of Tenali
for his high school education, Guntur for his
preliminary college, and afterwards to Presidency College, Madras (now
known as Chennai), where he received his M.A. in mathematics in 1941. He
then joined the mathematics department of the University
of Madras to work with
Professor Vaidyanathaswamy for his M.Sc., obtained in 1945, and his Ph.D., which he
completed in 1951.
He began teaching as Assistant Professor in mathematics at Presidency
College in Madras (1946-1953), taking a two-year study leave to complete
his doctorate. At that point, the state of Andhra Pradesh was officially
separated from the state of Madras,
and he was transferred to the new state to become the Head of the
Mathematics Department and help to shape the government colleges at Rajahmandry (1953-1954) and Cuddapah
(1954-1955). In 1955 he left government service to become Reader in
Mathematics at Sri Venkateswara University
in Tirupati, and became the Head of the
Department of Mathematics in 1958.
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In 1960, he came to the United
States as a Visiting Professor of
Mathematics at the University of Missouri,
Columbia, Missouri.
The next year, he joined the regular faculty as Associate Professor and
served for two more years. He moved to Canada
to join the faculty at the University
of Alberta in Edmonton
in 1963. In
1966, he returned to India
as Chairman of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University
of Kerala,
Trivandrum
and Cochin for one year
(1966-1967). He returned to the University
of Missouri for a year as
Professor of Mathematics (1967-1968), and resettled in the University
of Alberta in Canada
as Professor Mathematics, where he stayed until his retirement
(1968-1990). After 1990, he stayed on
the faculty of the University of Alberta
as Professor Emeritus, Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences
(1991- 2006). During the last period,
he concentrated solely on his research, and in 2004 received an award from
the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, for holding
NSERC research grants continuously for over 25 years. Just before his death in 2006, published a
book, Partition Theory, in collaboration with A.K. Agarwal
and Padmavatamma.
Dr. Subbarao resided primarily in the North
American continent since 1960, and became a Canadian citizen in 1978. His
collaborations and travels took him all over the world. While maintaining
close links to India,
Dr. Subbarao also visited and collaborated with
leading mathematicians in Canada,
the United States,
Hungary, Japan,
China, Singapore,
and Australia.
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