Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi - Fergusson College, Pune

Fergusson College, Pune

In 1933, he joined the Deccan Education Society’s Fergusson College in Pune, where he taught mathematics for the next 12 years. In 1935, his eldest daughter, Maya was born, while in 1939, the youngest, Meera, a well-known sociologist and feminist was born.

In Pune, while teaching mathematics and conducting research in the field, he started his interdisciplinary pursuit. In 1944 he published a small article of 4 pages titled ‘The Estimation of Map Distance from Recombination Values’ in Annals of Eugenics, in which he introduced what later came to be known as Kosambi's map function.

One of the most important contributions of Kosambi to statistics is the widely known technique called proper orthogonal decomposition (POD). Although it was originally developed by Kosambi in 1943, it is now referred to as the Karhunen–Loève expansion. In the 1943 paper entitled 'Statistics in Function Space' presented in the Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society, Kosambi presented the Proper Orthogonal Decomposition some years before Karhunen (1945) and Loeve (1948). This tool has found application to such diverse fields as image processing, signal processing, data compression, oceanography, chemical engineering and fluid mechanics. Unfortunately this most important contribution of his is barely acknowledged in most papers that utilize the POD method. In recent years though, it is heartening to note that some authors have indeed referred to it as the Kosambi-Karhunen-Loeve decomposition.

It was his studies in numismatics that initiated him into the field of historical research. He made a thorough study of Sanskrit and ancient literature, and he started his classic work on the ancient poet Bhartṛhari. He published his critical editions of Bhartrihari's Shatakatrayee and Subhashitas during 1945-1948.

It was during this period that he started his political activism, coming close to the radical streams in the ongoing Independence movement, especially the Communist Party of India. He became an outspoken Marxist and wrote some political articles.