M. S. Raghunathan

[6] Madabusi Santanam Raghunathan was born on 11 August 1941 at Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh, his maternal grandparents' place.

His father Santanam continued the family's timber business and expanded it through exports to Europe and Japan.

He had earlier joined the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, after a BSc in Physics, but had to leave his studies mid-way to take care of the family business.

Raghunathan fondly recalls that his father had a feeling for science and used to talk about it, making it very interesting to the children.

He also wrote, and published on his own, a book on William Makepeace Thackeray, which was later found to have been reprinted in the United States, without his knowledge, indeed in violation of the copyright he held.

Raghunathan has also played an important role in the promotion of mathematics through various scientific bodies, in both advisory and administrative capacities.

He organised the Ramanujan centenary celebrations in Chennai in 1987, with an international conference attended by the foremost number theorists.

Raghunathan's book "Discrete Subgroups of Lie Groups", published by Springer Verlag, Germany, in 1972 is now a classic in the area.