Kosambi: A Polymath

This post is a review of the book D. D. Kosambi: One Life, Many Worlds by Ram Ramaswamy, an academic whose own research lies in nonlinear science and computational biology.

As the name suggests, the book is a biography. Kosambi was a polymath, making original and distinguished contributions to mathematics (e.g. Kosambi-Cartan-Chern theory, which analyzes second-order differential equations), genetics (e.g. the Kosambi mapping function), numismatics, (Marxist) history, literature, environmental activism (e.g. opposition to nuclear power) and world peace. He was also a polyglot, fluent in 12 languages. All this before he passed away at the early age of 59.

The book begins with the life of Kosambi's father, Dharmananda, who left home at an early age to learn about Buddhism, traveling in India, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Burma. His consequent mastery of Sanskrit and Pali led him to various institutions, including Harvard University where he translated Buddhist texts.

His interest in Marxism arose from his perception that it resembled Buddhism in many ways. Later, he espoused Jainism and the book has a dramatic description of his end by self-starvation, the Jain method of sallekhana, at Mahatma Gandhi's ashram in Sevagram.

While Dharmananda was in Boston, his son Damodar enrolled at Harvard, where he was taught mathematics by Birkhoff (senior) among others, and also excelled in athletics. Later, Kosambi worked as a mathematician at several institutions, particularly at the Tata Institute in Mumbai, where he was hired by Bhabha.

The book emphasizes the roving intellectual nature of Kosambi, who moved from subject to subject, making contributions, but without staying to focus too much further. His temperament, which was very sensitive to criticism, also inevitably led to disputes, including with his collaborators and supporters. As a result, he was unable to stay for too long at any specific institution.

In particular, Bhabha became disenchanted with him at the Tata Institute, as Kosambi was not helping build a school of mathematics. Kosambi retaliated by criticising Bhabha's nuclear program for generating energy in India, and suggested the use of solar power instead. While employed in the math department, since he became interested in other things like history and archaeology, eventually, Kosambi's mathematical knowledge became dated and students and faculty gravitated more towards more current mathematical research.

A big fiasco occurred when Kosambi claimed to have produced a probabilistic proof of the Riemann Hypothesis (the author considers this as a desperate attempt to regain respectability for probability theory by Kosambi). This claim was not accepted by the international experts, which included Andre Weil and Paul Erdos.

The book is a scholarly and detailed account of Kosambi's curtailed but prolific career, spiced up with academic and institutional anecdotes (Kosambi himself had a sharp wit) and a substantial bibliography.

The picture that emerges is that of a powerful, if idiosyncratic, intellect which ranged broadly over many fields, and did not comfortably fit into any straightforward categorization that society requires in order to achieve institutional functionality.

A book worth reading to learn about the development and contributions of a great and roving mind and a free spirit.