“Life is no brief candle for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.” — George Bernard Shaw
The words of Bernard Shaw on teachers hold good for Prof. V. Swaminathan , who has been a leading light and guided 26 Ph.D. scholars in his teaching career spanning more than three decades. He shares some of his experiences as teacher and student with D. Karthikeyan .
Sixty-five-year-old Dr. Swaminathan is member of the Mathematics Genealogy Project, of Department of Mathematics, North Dakota State University, which is involved in tracing the genealogy of all the mathematicians in the world.
Dr. Swaminathan has guided students/descendants from 1995 till 2011 which is numbering 25, he did his Ph.D. dissertation on Boolean Rings under Prof. K.L.N. Swamy and the genealogy could be traced from links of K.L.N. Swamy whose advisor was Nadimpalli Venkata Subramanian who did his PhD from University of California Berkeley and his adviser Alfred Foster and his descendants finally led us to great mathematicians like Joseph Louis Lagrange, Leonhard Euler, Jacob and Johann Bernouli to 17th Century German Mathematicians Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Erhard Wiegel.
Dr. Swaminathan has been a member and reviewer of American Mathematical Society for the past 32 years and on July 22, 2011 he was awarded the honorary fellowship by Ancient Sciences and Archaeology for his contribution to the field of Graph Theory, Algebra, Topology, Mathematics in Ancient Sanskritic Texts, Coding Theory and its Applications and Genetic Algorithms.
A few of his research projects were of greater sociological interest, for example, “Study of Caste Conflicts and Solutions through Graph Modeling,” was a study done during 2000 till 2002, talking about this project he said that the models were easy to frame by using sociological applications to graph theory but the solutions were not that easy as it involved human behaviour.
He also has a Department of Science and Technology project, which is an ongoing project on the Terrorist Attack on Indian Parliament, as a decision-making body of a large democracy why it was attacked and what are the graph models which shall be used and adopted to lessen the damage during attacks like these were the research questions.
Reminiscing about his student days, Dr. Swaminathan gave full credit to his teacher P. Venkatraman of Viraraghava High School, Thanjavur, who encouraged him a lot during his Class X and XI days. Dr. Swaminathan secured first place in the school during his SSLC exams and was awarded the Dr. Ramanathan Gold Medal.
Following this feat, he was awarded the National Merit Scholarship for six years from 1962 to 1968. He did his B.Sc in Maths from Raja Serfoji Government College and MSc Maths from National College, Tiruchi, and Ph.D. from Andhra University and all through his educational career he scored first class with distinction.
He had served as lecturer at National College, Tiruchi for two years, and almost for two decades worked as an Assistant professor and Professor at Adithanar College of Arts and Sciences, Tiruchendur. He later joined Saraswathi Narayanan College as Reader and now serves as Honorary Head of the Ramanujam Research Centre in Mathematics at Saraswathi Narayanan College.
Dr. Swaminathan has been part of dozen radio programmes giving small talks on Mathematics. He has published 60 research papers in refereed national and international journals, proceedings of national and international conferences.
It was only after completing his Ph.D. at the age of 35, he married, his wife V. Lalitha, a retired Head, Department of Physics from Fatima College. Right after marriage, he went to France in 1984, though reluctant, his wife persuaded him and he presented papers at the first international symposium on ‘Ordered Algebraic Structures.'
One of the most striking features of his achievements as a teacher is his unassuming approach that “I am here to help you ,” this has helped so many students.
Doing research under a guide is generally a psychological thing, you should not have any prejudices in your mind, and you need to have a freewheeling discussion on the topics and other related issues before actually going ahead with research.
A guide should provide the much needed confidence to his ward. He had a number of Dalit and scholars from religious minorities who did Ph.D. under him and several of them were from rural background, he said that they were brilliant when it comes to conceptualising but it was the communication part which needs to be honed, he said.
When asked about what makes a good teacher, he quickly responded that complete dedication should be a role model for students, we have to mould the students not only aiming degree or marks but also focus on character building. In fact The Hindu (Nov 02, 2009) carried a story on his unique distinction when nine of his Ph.D. students were awarded Ph.D. in Mathematics. He has two children, son is doing his MS in Arizona State University and daughter who has an M.E. and is married.
