A. A. Krishnaswami Ayyangar

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A. A. Krishnaswami Ayyangar (1892–1953) was a mathematician from India. He also wrote many papers on Vedic mathematics.

A. A. Krishnaswami Ayyangar (AAK), was born on 1 December, 1892. He got his M.A. in Mathematics at the age of 18 and subsequently started teaching Mathematics at his own alma mater, Pachaiappas College, Chennai (Madras). He was married to Seshammal and they had four sons, A. K. Srinivasan, A. K. Ramanujan, A. K. Rajagopal, A. K. Vasudevan, and two daughters Mrs. Vedavathi Bhogishayana and Mrs. Saroja Krishnamurthi. In 1918 he joined the Mathematics Department, University of Mysore and retired from there in 1947. He passed away in June 1953. During his tenure at the University, for nearly three decades, he made many contributions to Geometry, Statistics, Astronomy, the History of Indian Mathematics, and other topics.

The subject matter of interest, presented in this CD, concerns only his works on the history of Indian Mathematics. This work involved not only translations from the Sanskrit texts but also transforming some of them in modern notation and language. The originality of AAK’s work was brought home to Rajagopal on a casual conversation with Professor R. Sridharan of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay in 1998. Professor Sridharan gave him an article he had written in Science in the West and India, edited by B. V. Subbarayappa and N. Mukunda, (1995, Himalaya Publishing House, Bombay). In this he points out that AAK‘s article on the Chakravala method (included in this CD) shows how it differs from the method of continued fractions. He recounted that this point was missed by A. Weil, who thought the Chakravala method was only an “experimental fact” to the Indians and attributed general proofs to Fermat and Lagrange much later! On a different occasion, Professor Subhash Kak of Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, stressed to Rajagopal that AAK’s presentations of Indian works were unique and should be known generally in the community of mathematicians today who are interested in the History of Mathematics. These incidents prompted us to present some of AAK’s papers in a CD with brief account of each of the articles included as an aid to the reader.

Without the keen interest evinced by Professor Kak and his drive to get Indian contributions to the World of Astronomy, Mathematics, Music, and everything else, this collection would have suffered the quiet death of so many things Indian! Two new publications may be mentioned: “Indian Mathematics: Redressing the balance” by Ian G. Pearce (2002, http://www.history.mcs,st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Projects/Pearce/index.html) and “The Crest of the Peacock, Non-European Roots of Mathematics” (2000, Princeton University Press) by George Ghverghese Joseph which do not contain any citations from AAK’s works, most certainly because of their obscurity! We owe Professor Kak a debt of gratitude for urging us to bring the work of AAK into the collection of Indian contributions to Mathematics and Astronomy.

It was not easy to obtain the relevant articles from the various journals particularly because AAK’s publications date back to early 1920’s and onwards. This collection of AAK’s articles on Indian Mathematics and Astronomy, in this CD, is a partial culmination of a much larger search for all his writings. In this form, this CD is our family’s tribute to our father’s memory. It is gratifying to find these works to be of interest to people engaged in writing about the World History of Mathematics and Astronomy to day. I hope this collection is a modest contribution to this endeavor.