The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) at Kanpur has appointed Prof A Raghuram as a Distinguished Honorary Professor for a period of three years.

Raghuram studies the special values of L-functions. The idea of an L-function is ubiquitous in modern number theory. The basic theorems and conjectures of the Langlands program, considered as a grand unifying principle in Mathematics, have L-functions at their very core. An L-function is a function attached to an interesting mathematical object, and the values of such an L-function at some special points usually encode deep arithmetic about that object. Raghuram's work is about decoding such information.

In a decade long foundational work, Günter Harder and Raghuram systematically studied the geometry and topology of locally symmetric spaces and applied this machinery to the study of special values of L-functions. His work with Harder will appear as a volume in the Annals of Mathematics Studies, published by the Princeton University Press, which is one of the oldest and most respected series in science publishing. One of Raghuram's long-term goals is to understand the arithmetic nature of all the L-functions in the Langlands program.

Congratulations to Prof Raghuram on this recognition for his research!