The year 2020 Ramanujan Prize for Young Mathematicians was awarded to Dr. Carolina Araujo, Mathematician from the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IMPA), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in a virtual ceremony on 9th December 2020.
The prize is awarded annually to a researcher from a developing country funded by the Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India in association with ICTP (International Centre for Theoretical Physics), and the International Mathematical Union (IMU) was given for her outstanding work in algebraic geometry. Her work area focuses on birational geometry, which aims to classify and describe the structure of algebraic varieties.
Dr. Araujo, who is Vice President of the Committee for Women in Mathematics at the International Mathematical Union, is the first non-Indian women mathematician to receive this prize and will be a role model for all women around the world.
Prof Ashutosh Sharma, briefing about the new programmes for women like Vigyan Jyoti, initiated by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Prof Sharma, invited Dr Araujo to India to encourage women mathematicians and inspire them by her own example.
Dr. Neena Malhotra, Ambassador of India to Italy, congratulated Dr Carolina for receiving the Ramanujan Prize for mathematics and wished Dr Carolina for her future career and mathematical endeavours.
Permanent Representative of India to UNESCO H. E. Mr. Vishal V. Sharma said that a mathematician does not belong to a particular country. Dr Araujo may be a Brazilian, but she's a mathematician. She belongs to the universe because mathematics is the language of the universe.
At the award ceremony, Dr Araujo spoke about algebraic geometry, including birational geometry and foliations in a talk titled 'Algebraic Varieties with Positive Tangent Bundles'.
The Prize is given every year to young mathematicians less than 45 years of age who have conducted outstanding research in a developing country has been supported by DST in the memory of Srinivasa Ramanujan, a genius in pure mathematics who was essentially self-taught and made spectacular contributions to elliptic functions, continued fractions, infinite series, and analytical theory of numbers.
