The Department of Mathematics has started in 1951 through the vision and untiring efforts of late Prof. B. R. Seth, the first head of the Department. With his dynamic leadership, a strong school of Continuum Mechanics came into existence. In fact, this school has become a pool to cater experts to various other new institutes that have come up consequently. In 1956, Prof. B. R. Seth took initiation to establish Indian Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ISTAM), one of the main forums where scientists, engineers, technologists, and mathematicians could interact and exchange ideas, has now achieved international recognition.

In subsequent years, the department has attracted faculty with diversified expertise, for example, Statistics and Quality Control, Operations Research, Reliability, Interval Analysis, Algebra, Biomechanics, Complex analysis, Functional analysis, Optimization, and Data Base Management systems. The department’s vision to cater to the demand from software industry resulted to start a M.Tech. programme in Computer Science and Data Processing (CSDP) and a 5-Year integrated M.Sc. programme in Mathematics and Computing. These two programmes are first of their kind in the country and witnessed integration of Mathematics with Theoretical Computer Science.

The department tried its best to cater to the needs of the institute where specific tailor made courses are to be offered to the needs of engineering departments. This helped to have a close collaboration with some of the engineering departments, which lead to joint Ph.D. supervisions. The Department has a Colloquium which is run by students. Its objective is mainly to have informal mathematical discussions and seminars along with social and cultural activities.

From the strong school of Applied Mathematics, the department now has a balanced expertize covering various areas of Mathematics, Statistics and Theoretical Computer Science. The department is looking forward to encourage young faculty across diversified areas of Mathematics.

 

To say a few words about this department we must begin with the fact that our Mathematics department is the oldest among all the IITs. Over the years this department has had copious interdisciplinary collaborations and interactions in diverse areas with researchers and pioneers in several advanced fields of Mathematics. At present, we have 35 faculty members and 125 research scholars engaged in research covering all the frontline topics of Mathematics. We offer 5 year Integrated MSc and 2 year lateral entry MSc in Mathematics as well as an MTech course in Computer Science and Data processing. Apart from that we also offer courses starting from basic under graduate Mathematics to specialized courses on advanced mathematics for our BTech students. This department not only focuses on training in the rudiments of Mathematics , it also emphasizes in offering advanced courses on  applications in modern day technology.  We also offer PhD in Mathematics and every year 30 students join. The faculty members, postdoctoral fellows, Phd students are actively engaged in research in versatile areas of Mathematical Science, coordinate sponsored research projects, collaborate with reputed academician in India and abroad.  Faculty members jointly work with other sister departments of the institute on several areas such as microscale transport phenomena, Cyber security, quantum computing, image processing, data science and statistical simulation in the broad domain of Applicable Mathematics. There are strong groups in the department engaged on different other areas of pure mathematics including Commutative Algebra, Combinatorics, Graph Theory, Topology and Functional Analysis.