A mathematician's tribute to another

CHANDIGARH: Fields Medal winner Manjul Bhargava, who was awarded the Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa) at the Panjab University Convocation on Saturday, also delivered the university's first-ever Sarvadaman Chowla Memorial Annual Lecture on Saturday morning.
As a mathematician remembering another, Bhargava said that during his first brush with Chowla, he never thought that he would be speaking at the first lecture instituted in his memory at PU many years later.
"I was in the first year of graduate school when I attended my first number theory conference, which was being held in the memory of Chowla. The lectures I attended and the conference shaped my view of the number theory," Bhargava recalled about the conference that was held way back in 1997.
"There, I learnt about his work and it played an important role in the way I think," added the professor of mathematics at Princeton University. At 40 years, Bhargava is the third youngest full professor in Princeton University's history.
The number theorist also made the audience note the uniqueness of the day when he was at PU. "While it may not sound as exciting to you, this is a unique day, being celebrated majorly in New York as 'Pi Day'. In the US format (mm-dd-yy), the date today is 03-14-15 and that makes it a once-in-a-century Pi Day," he added. The date is being considered unique as it matches up nicely with the first five digits of pi (3.1415).
Bhargava delivered a lecture on "Square Values of Mathematical Expressions" at PU's Dr SSBUICET auditorium. The lecture was organized by the department of Mathematics. Many participants from PU, local colleges and PEC University of Technology attended the lecture. Professor Emeritus and former PU vice- chancellor R P Bambah introduced Chowla, who was an alumnus of Panjab University, Lahore. He is also known as "a poet of Mathematics" and "an Ambassador of Number Theory".
In this lecture, Bhargava deliberated on understanding whether (and how often) a mathematical expression takes a square value is a problem, which has fascinated mathematicians since antiquity. He gave a survey of the problem, starting from its independent origins in many cultures in ancient times, to some of the major advances of the modern day.