P Kesava Menon

Puliyakot Keshava Menon (1917 – October 22, 1979) was a mathematician best known as Director of the Indian Joint Cipher Bureau.

Puliyakot Kesava Menon (1917–1979) (Bull. Math. Assoc. India 18 (1986), no. 1–4, 21–24)

Dr. P Kesava Menon was a world renowned mathematician. Puliyakot Kesava Menon (1917–1979) (Bull. Math. Assoc. India 18 (1986), no. 1–4, 21–24) His sudden demise on Oct 22, 1979, ended a plethora of active research in the areas of Number Theory, Combinatorics, Algebra and Cyphers.

Early life

P Kesava Menon was born (1917) in Alathur, which is now part of the Palakkad District of Kerala state in India. His mother Devaky Amma hailed from the Kattusseri Puliyakot family, and as per custome, Kesava Menon took his family name from his mother. His father A K Krishnan Unni Kartha hailed from Aiyiloor in Palghat district. Menon grew up on Alathur, under his uncle's supervision and hence his primary and high school education was conducted in modest surrounding at Alathur itself. As was the custom for bright students from landed families those days, Menon then had to travel to Madras city and join the Madras Christian College for higher studies. There, he completed his MA in Mathematics and was awarded a scholarship to pursue research under the guidance of Prof R Vaidyanathaswamy. In 1941, the University of Madras awarded him a MSc Degree for the thesis entitles "Contributions to the theory of multiplicative arithmetic functions". Thereafter he was appointed lecturer at the Annamalai University, where he served for two years, before joining the staff of Madras Christian College again as a professor and warden of Seliyur Hall. He was devoted to his research work alongside teaching, and in 1948 he submitted his dissertation on "Contributions to the theory of numbers" for which he was conferred with the highest and rare degree of Doctor of Science (DSc).

He theorized and published the classical inequality theory, which is today known as "Kesava Menon's classical inequality theorem" [http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/jcaa/2001/00000003/00000002/00229059]

He partnered with the renowned mathematician Ramanujan, on the number theory, as noted here in the Journal of the London Mathematical Society [http://jlms.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/citation/s1-40/1/49] [http://books.google.co.in/books?id=jbTbVoKP66IC&pg=PA155&lpg=PA155&dq=Kesava.Menon+Ramanujam&source=web&ots=ppcjJdCkyD&sig=1Gl98EbN1GRcktnSSjeQUb9K-DA&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result]