Mathematician’s career not always by the numbers

"Math is not a mechanical thing - it's as creative as writing a novel or painting," says Ravi Ramakrishna '88. The difference, he explains, is that math is a "vertical" subject. You can't study trigonometry if there are gaps of any size in your knowledge of algebra. To succeed in the field requires an extensive background of knowledge. Ramakrishna has been playing with numbers and math since he was five years old. He hadn't thought of it as a possible career, though, because his father and all of his uncles were engineers. "Coming from India in the 1930s, becoming an engineer was a way into the middle class," he explains.