Harish-Chandra*

Harish-Chandra was one of the outstanding mathematicians of his generation, an algebraist and analyst, and one of those responsible for transforming infinite-dimensional group representation the-ory from a modest topic on the periphery of mathematics and physics into a major field central to contemporary mathematics. Kanpur and Allahabad He was born on 11 October 1923 in Kanpur in North India. His paternal grandfather had been a senior railroad clerk in Ajmer who, to finance his son’s education, had resigned his post to collect the lump sum given as severance pay, and then rejoined the railroad, his seniority lost, in a junior position. His son, Chandrakishore, later the father of Harish-Chandra, had gained admission to the highly selective Thomason Engineering College at Roorkee, which had been founded by Dalhousie in 1857, and which was responsible for the training of civil engineers for the department of public works. Every graduate was assured a position in the government services and admission was much coveted. Harish-Chandra’s father, a civil engineer, eventually rose quite high, reaching the middle echelons of the Indian Service of Engineers, and retiring as Executive Engineer of the Uttar Pradesh Irrigation Works; but his early career would have been spent in the field, usually on horseback, inspecting and maintaining the dikes of the extensive network of canals in the northern plains. Roorkee College and the effort of competing with the British on still unfamiliar technical ground seem to have produced a breed of serious-minded, conscientious men, devoted to their work and somewhat distant from their families. None the less, Chandrakishore’s family did share the life of the canal posts, and Harish-Chandra, although not a robust child, often accompanied his father on his rounds, but it was not until later, when he was a young man and his father retired, that they became close. In 1937, just three years before the father’s retirement, the whole family was able for the first time to take an extended vacation. They travelled to Kashmir, their baggage carried by seventeen porters. Harish-Chandra, who remained a keen walker throughout his life, always recalled with plesaure the * Appeared in Biog. Mem. of Fellows of the Roy. Soc., vol 31 (1985)