Overview
- Mahesh Kakde of the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, has been named the 2026 winner of the Ramanujan Prize for Young Mathematicians from Developing Countries.
- The award citation cites Kakde’s fundamental results in noncommutative Iwasawa theory and his progress on the Gross–Stark and Brumer–Stark conjectures, work that bears on questions related to Hilbert’s 12th problem.
- The Ramanujan Prize is jointly administered by the International Centre for Theoretical Physics and the International Mathematical Union, is open to researchers under 45 working in developing countries, and carries a $10,000 cash award.
- Kakde trained at the Indian Statistical Institute and the University of Cambridge (PhD 2008), held positions at Princeton, UCL and King’s College London, joined IISc in 2019, and already holds honours such as the Infosys Prize and invitations to speak at the International Congress of Mathematicians; this new prize will raise his international profile and may help attract further research support in India.
- The Ramanujan Prize was created in 2005 to spotlight outstanding research done under challenging conditions in developing countries, and several outlets reported that Kakde is the fifth Indian to receive the award.