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Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi | |
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| Born | 31 July 1907 Kosben, Goa, India |
| Died | 29 June 1966 (aged 58) Pune, India |
| Occupation(s) | Mathematician and Marxist historian |
| Relatives | Dharmanand Kosambi (father) Meera Kosambi (daughter) |
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Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi (31 July 1907 – 29 June 1966) was an Indian polymath with interests in mathematics, statistics, philology, history, and genetics. He contributed to genetics by introducing the Kosambi map function.[1] In statistics, he was the first person to develop orthogonal infinite series expressions for stochastic processes via the Kosambi–Karhunen–Loève theorem.[2][3] He is also well known for his work in numismatics and for compiling critical editions of ancient Sanskrit texts. His father, Dharmananda Damodar Kosambi, had studied ancient Indian texts with a particular emphasis on Buddhism and its literature in the Pali language. Damodar Kosambi emulated him by developing a keen interest in his country's ancient history. He was also a Marxist historian specialising in ancient India who employed the historical materialist approach in his work.[4] He is particularly known for his classic work An Introduction to the Study of Indian History.
He is described as "the patriarch of the Marxist school of Indian historiography".[4] Kosambi was critical of the policies of then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, which, according to him, promoted capitalism in the guise of democratic socialism. He was an enthusiast of the Chinese Communist Revolution and its ideals, and was a leading activist in the world peace movement.
- ^ Vinod, K.K. (June 2011). "Kosambi and the genetic mapping function". Resonance. 16 (6): 540–550. doi:10.1007/s12045-011-0060-x. S2CID 84289582.
- ^ Raju, C.K. (2009), "Kosambi the Mathematician", Economic and Political Weekly, 44 (20): 33–45
- ^ Kosambi, D. D. (1943), "Statistics in Function Space", Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society, 7: 76–88, MR 0009816
- ^ a b Sreedharan, E. (2004). A Textbook of Historiography: 500 BC to AD 2000. Orient Blackswan. p. 469. ISBN 978-81-250-2657-0.