GRANT'S DESI ACHIEVER
THE ANSWERS TO SOME OF LIFE’S BIG QUESTIONS
Professor Vijayakumar Murty, mathematician, Order of Canada.
By SHAGORIKA EASWAR
Professor Vijayakumar Murty celebrated his appointment to the Order of Canada with a mango cake.
He was in the middle of a workshop at the Chennai Math Institute when his appointment was announced last December, and the students brought in a mango cake to celebrate.
Prof Murty is one of Canada’s leading mathematicians. A professor at the University of Toronto, he has advanced knowledge in various mathematical fields, including analytic number theory.
He is the founder of the Ganita Lab, co-founder of Prata Technologies and PerfectCloud, and former Director of the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences.
He has a PhD in mathematics from Harvard and an honorary doctorate (DSc) from Western.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC), and Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India (FNAS). The Canadian Mathematical Society lists him in their inaugural class of fellows, and he is the recipient of the University of Toronto’s President’s Impact Award.
His interest in mathematics ranges from the pure study of the subject to its applications in data and information security.
He helped inform policy decisions in Canada during the COVID pandemic.
“The Dean of the School of Public Health wanted a mathematician on the modelling table as one of the first co-chairs. We met frequently, listened to what the experts were predicting and extracted the most possible trajectory. There were questions about possible scenarios. What would happen if the Canada-US border was opened, for instance. We’d try to incorporate that into the model. Decisions on when to close schools and public spaces and when to reopen were made by the government partially based on these inputs, and partially on other considerations not connected to modelling.
“Someone asked if we knew the economic implications of shutting down the borders. I said no, we didn’t. But if they gave us the drivers we could try to incorporate them into a model. Rather than it being about public health or the economy, we had to find a way to approach the disease for favourable public health outcomes and favourable economic outcomes. At first it looked impossible, but we came up with a method. We called it integrative modelling. Post-pandemic we are continuing to study this by incorporating other aspects of social well-being such as mental health.”
Prof Murty is also a renowned scholar of Indian philosophy, deeply rooted in the teachings of Vedanta.
He explains the much talked-about Vedic math.
“The Vedas deal with the realm of knowledge beyond the physical and the psychological. Math is a language of quantitative exploration and has to be within the physical and psychological. So Vedic math refers to how they calculated in the Vedic age. It was about what we would call pure or abstract thinking applied to computation. Brahmagupta, credited with introducing zero, was an astronomer. He and Aryabhatta were thinkers who were motivated by the problems of existence but they let their minds travel beyond, to issues that had nothing to do with the physical. Did they have any technology we don’t know about? Possibly. Math, like any branch of science, goes through phases of discovery and forgetting. We are currently in a phase of rediscovery, a kind of historic interest.”
He also explains how the concept of Advaita – a very carefully constructed word that means not two – almost distinguishes Eastern and Western thought. “They said ‘not two’ where multiplicity is gone, not ‘There is one’. In Western thought there is monism. Eastern philosophy is about transcending dualism. Once you transcend the concept of dualism, language falls away.”
Steering away from theology, he awakens his students to the mystery of life through examples from their own experiences. What is that sense of joy, that sense of discovery? That which is magical, not rational?
Prof Murty is the cool professor who references The Matrix in his lectures and is a fan of the Kung Fu Panda movies. “We survive the world we come into, we don’t question it,” he says. “We think something is too hard, beyond us. The panda doesn’t know kung-fu, he admires it. Even when Po is taught kung-fu by the teacher of the legendary Furious Five, he does it his own way. That’s why he’s able to defeat Tai Lung. This teaches us to think differently.
“How are you going to get to the big breakthrough unless you think differently? Conventional wisdom can sometimes be wrong. It can put you in a box – and that box is crowded. So I have my PhD students watch Kung Fu Panda and meditate on it. It’s not about how much you know, but about believing in yourself. And with that belief you can dare to think differently.”
“Believe that you are a person of great capacity.” Prof. Murty with students in India as they celebrate his Order of Canada.
To those who say they don’t “get” math, or that it doesn’t have a place in their lives, Prof Murty points out that every time we use a search engine, we’re using linear algebra! Math forms the basis of all our secure electronic communications from banking to ordering pizza online. Math teaches you to think abstractly and systematically. People become good at solving problems.
To move from other disciplines to math is hard, but from math to other subjects is easy. A student of his went into law, mathematics helping him understand complicated legal cases.
“Math is magical, it keeps surprising you with connections you couldn’t anticipate. What ecstasy must Archimedes have experienced in his Eureka! moment. The ecstasy, the rasa, is real.
“Sadly, you don’t get to experience this magic and this beauty until you’re at an advanced level. We’re not conveying that math is a living, beautiful subject in the lower classes effectively. The sense of wonder is missing. But at the PhD level, you get to feel that beauty and wonder, because the structure is gone, and there’s a lot of searching for answers, a lot of silence in the classrooms. And the frontiers of knowledge are all about the unknown.
“The big impediment to learning is not that the subject is hard, but self-doubt. My important qualification as a teacher is not how much math I know, but whether I can use my experience to help silence that apprehension. Can I communicate that math is a living, beautiful subject that all of us can participate in, create?”
He sees no contradiction in being a philosopher and a mathematician who is also deeply interested in music.
Both math and music are based on precise notations, he says.
“A beginner and Leonard Bernstein can both play a Mozart score. If it was only about the notes, they should sound the same, but they don’t. Notes are just a mnemonic for something inexpressible trying to peer from behind the symbols.
“In math, you write a formula and think you’re done. A mathematician sees a whole world, a new starting point in that formula. And philosophy is our attempt to develop knowledge of our world, ourselves, and what might lie beyond both. When we make that precise, it becomes science.
“I always say, the essence of discovery is attention. An artist once said to me, everyone can write, but everyone can’t draw because they are not seeing with attention. And this is yoga, Raja Yoga in particular. The way we think of ourselves and the world makes a difference. Do we have free will? What makes us human? Both Eastern and Western philosophies say we have free will. The answer varies for who we are. In Western thought, I am the mind. In Eastern thought, I am consciousness, and that can exist without the mind.
“If I have free will and I am the mind, then there’s no science of the mind because science is about the discovery of laws and laws limit us, and that would contradict free will. This is why the science of psychology developed so late in the West. If on the other hand, I have free will and I am not the mind, then it is possible that there is a science of the mind, and this view is exactly what led to the discovery of yoga. Raja Yoga is the science of the mind, and it helps you gain control of the mind. It does not contradict free will because you, as consciousness, are free.”
Prof Murty has written several books in his long and distinguished career. The latest, The Science of Human Possibilities, is also his first non-math book. It is on the art of learning, honouring tradition and embracing enlightenment.
“Newton said, ‘If I’ve been able to see farther, it’s because I’ve been standing on the shoulders of giants’,” he says. “So teaching modern math is not about negating the past. Tradition is to be embraced – not a confining, but an enabling embrace.”
His interest in math was deepened by his interactions with his brother M. Ram Murty, also a renowned mathematician. He recalls finding a copy of Teach Yourself Calculus at one of the ubiquitous pavement booksellers in India and actually doing that, when he was all of 11.
Prof Murty came to Canada from Andhra Pradesh, India. There were issues with the weather, sourcing desi staples for familiar cuisine, and cultural differences, but the people were very friendly.
“I’m very happy with the way life turned out. There was a lot of chance and luck involved, but I had access to knowledge and opportunities to learn math and Indian philosophy. It’s been a very positive journey.”
Their mother ensured that they were comfortable in both cultures because a rich tradition can enhance your perspective.
Prof Murty helped co-ordinate the setting up of the Vedanta Vidya Mandir by Ramakrishna Mission and the Vedanta Society of Toronto. Here they teach moral and ethical values, and also a spiritual perspective. Parents are engaged with Gita classes or talks on Swami Vivekananda. “It’s a place to share experience and knowledge. I’m charmed that students who came to us as kids will sometimes walk into my classroom at university to say thank you for what they learnt at the school.”
Prof Murty tells his students to believe in themselves.
“You’re not a small being. You have tremendous potential.
“Try to figure out what brings you the greatest happiness in life and if you follow a path to that, you will succeed, you will be the role model others look to for inspiration.
“What you think about yourself is the single most important factor in your success.
“Believe that you are a person of great capacity. Say, ‘I can make myself peaceful and successful, and I can do the same for others’.”
• Grant’s is proud to present this series about people who are making a difference in the community. Represented by PMA Canada (www.pmacanada.com).
