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S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan (Mathematician) Biography: Age, Career,Family
Quick Info
Date of birth2 January 1940
Age85 Years
BirthplaceChennai, Tamil Nadu
ProfessionMathematician
NationalityAmerican
Marital statusMarried
SpouseVasundra Varadhan
FamilyTwo sons: Gopalakrishnan Varadhan (1969-2001) and Ashok Varadhan (born 1972)
S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan (Mathematician) Biography
S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan is an Indian-born American mathematician celebrated for creating a unified theory of large deviations and for foundational work in
Early life and backgroundSathamangalam Ranga Iyengar Srinivasa Varadhan was born on 2 January 1940 in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. He grew up in various parts of the city and completed his early schooling at Board High School in Ponneri. Varadhan went on to study at Presidency College in Madras, where he earned a B.Sc. and an M.Sc. in statistics, and later completed a Ph.D. at the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta. As a child and student he studied in Tamil and later adapted to learning in English when he entered college.
Career
After completing his doctorate, Varadhan began a long association with New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in 1963 as a postdoctoral fellow. He advanced through the academic ranks there, becoming an assistant professor in 1966, an associate professor in 1968, and later a full professor. He served as Director of the Courant Institute from 1980 to 1984 and returned to the position again in 1992. Between 1984 and 1985 he took a sabbatical from his duties at Courant.
Varadhan’s research established key components of modern probability theory. He developed analytic tools and a predictive framework for rare events that became known as a unified theory of large deviations. His work spans diffusion equations, martingale problems, central limit theorems for additive functionals of reversible Markov processes, and hydrodynamics for interacting particle systems. Collaborations with mathematicians such as Daniel W. Stroock, Monroe D. Donsker, George Papanicolaou and Maozheng Guo yielded important results on diffusion processes, population genetics and hydrodynamic limits.
His scholarly output includes research papers on multidimensional diffusion processes, large deviations and applications, and hydrodynamics and large deviations for simple exclusion processes. He is also the author of books addressing diffusion problems and partial differential equations (1980), Large Deviations and Applications (1984), and Probability Theory (2001).
Honours and recognition
Varadhan’s contributions have been recognized with many honours and awards. He received the AMS–SIAM George David Birkhoff Prize in 1994 and the Margaret and Herman Sokol Award from New York University in 1995. In 1996 he was co-recipient of the Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research for work with Daniel W. Stroock on diffusion processes. The pinnacle of his recognition came in 2007 when he was awarded the Abel Prize by the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters for his contributions to probability theory and for creating the unified theory of large deviations with Monroe D. Donsker.
Additional national and institutional honours include two honorary degrees (one from Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris and one from the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata), the Padma Bhushan in 2008, the National Medal of Science in 2010, and the Padma Vibhushan in 2023. He has been elected to numerous academies and societies, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Third World Academy of Sciences in 1988, the Royal Society and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 1991, the Indian Academy of Sciences in 2004, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics in 2009, and the American Mathematical Society in 2012. He became a member of the US National Academy of Sciences in 1995.
Public profile
Varadhan is a Frank J. Gould Professor at the Courant Institute and is widely known for research that links probability theory to mathematical physics and other applied fields. His methods have influenced areas such as quantum field theory, statistical mechanics, population dynamics and traffic modeling, and they have strengthened computational approaches to simulating rare events.
Personal life
Varadhan married Vasundra Varadhan in June 1964. The couple had two sons: Gopalakrishnan Varadhan (born 1969) and Ashok Varadhan (born 1972). Their elder son, Gopalakrishnan, was among those who died in the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. Varadhan’s father, Ranga Iyengar, was a science teacher and principal of the Board High School in Ponneri; his mother’s name is not listed in the available information.
Outside of mathematics, Varadhan’s interests include listening to classical Indian and Western music, watching films and reading Tamil literature. He follows a vegetarian diet.
Latest updates
In addition to long-standing academic honours, Varadhan continued to be recognized in India late in his career, receiving the Padma Vibhushan in 2023. He has chaired prize juries, including the Mathematical Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize in 2009, and served as chief guest at the event in 2020.
Varadhan’s legacy rests on a body of theory and collaboration that reshaped modern probability and its applications across several scientific disciplines. His work on large deviations and diffusion processes remains central to ongoing research in probability and statistical physics.
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Recent Work
Book on probability theory (2001)
2001Book on large deviation theory (1984)
1984Book on diffusion problems and PDEs (1980)
1980Career Highlights
- Developed a unified theory of large deviations
- Abel Prize (2007) for contributions to probability theory
- Leroy P. Steele Prize (1996) for work on diffusion processes with Daniel W. Stroock
- Served twice as Director of NYU’s Courant Institute
- Elected to multiple national and international academies and societies
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Frequently Asked Questions
When was S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan (Mathematician) born?
S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan (Mathematician) was born on 2 January 1940.
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S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan (Mathematician) is known for mathematician.
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S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan (Mathematician)'s marital status is listed as Married.
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S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan (Mathematician) is publicly listed as married to Vasundra Varadhan.
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