Bhubaneswar: Renowned mathematician and former vice chancellor of Utkal University Professor Gokulananda Das passed away at his residence in Bhubaneswar on Saturday evening. He was 87.
He is survived by his wife, two sons and a daughter.
Prof Das served in different capacities in the Department of Mathematics in Utkal University before becoming the varsity’s vice chancellor from 1998 to 2001. He was the founding professor of Mathematics at Sambalpur University, a commonwealth post doctoral fellow at University College London and a visiting professor at University of California, Santa Barbara in the US.
He was also chairman of the Bhubaneswar-based Institute of Mathematics and Applications and associated with the Orissa Mathematical Society.
He authored and co-authored 18 books, around 200 research papers and 150 article on mathematics, Zero in Odia, Zero (the spiritual number) in English, and many poems in Odia. His primary areas of interest were functional analysis, sequence spaces, ergodicity, probability, fixed points and approximation.
He won several awards, including the Samanta Chandra Sekhar award. The National Institute of Mathematics and Education Research has established the Gokulananda Das Research Award in Mathematics to encourage researchers in Odisha.