Renu Laskar

Trailblazing mathematician Renu Chakravarti Laskar passed away in Mountain View, California, on September 17, 2024, at age 92. She was surrounded by her family.
She was diagnosed with congestive heart failure earlier this year. Her family said she had recently suffered a stroke.
Laskar was professor emeritus at Clemson University; she had served on the faculty for 38 years. She was the first Indian woman to earn a PhD in mathematics from The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was the first female faculty at any campus of the Indian Institute of Technology.
Laskar, who collaborated with math giants such as R.C. Bose (inventor of the BCH codes used in wireless communications) and Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdos, was a mathematician who specialized in combinatorics and graph theory. She wrote four papers with Paul Erdos, giving her an Erdos number of 1.
She was a dedicated researcher of combinatorics and graph theory, mathematics that has had practical applications in computer science and in linguistics. Graph theory is also used, as examples, for sports teams and airline scheduling, and solving complicated puzzles such as Sudoko.
"She is loved, well known, highly respected and even legendary in graph theory, combinatorics and discrete mathematics," said her Clemson University colleague and longtime friend, Professor Stephen Hedetniemi.
At Clemson, Laskar graduated 14 PhDs, was the author of 160 publications and collaborated with 93 co-authors.
Laskar was born and raised in Bihar, India. She was not allowed to attend college - but home schooled. She was permitted to take the matriculation exam and she placed first in the entire state. Laskar had often credited her mother, Devrani Chakravarti, for advocating that her daughter receive an education.
After college, Laskar earned a master's degree in mathematics from B. R. Ambedkar Bihar University. For a few years she taught at Ranchi Women's college. She won a Fulbright scholarship and in 1958, began pursuing a PhD in mathematics at The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
She was the first female Ph.D. in Mathematics from UIUC. She returned to India after that and in 1962, joined the IIT Kharagpur campus as the first woman faculty. She married physicist Amulya Lal Laskar, whom she met in Illinois. After three years, the Laskars then moved back to the U.S. at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and worked with Raj Chandra Bose among others. In 1968, she joined Clemson University. She retired in 2006.
Laskar is survived by her son, Joy, and daughter-in-law Devadutta, of Mountain View, California; and her son, Sonjoy Raja, and daughter-in-law Shilpi, of Atlanta, Georgia; six grandchildren: Anjini, Ellora, Devrani, Meera, Asha, Radhika; one sister, Priti Chakravarty, of Boston, Massachusetts; and twenty-two nephews and nieces. She is preceded in death by her husband Amulya Lal Laskar, in 1991. He was physics professor at Clemson University who had worked with two-time Nobel laureate John Bardeen.
The family conducted a private cremation. A memorial service and celebration of life will be held October 19.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks contributions be made in her name to Pratham, a foundation dedicated to improving literacy in India.
Prathamusa.org