Mathematics: The Quest For Truth And Beauty

Albert Einstein is often viewed as the icon of genius, and his theories are admired for their beauty and correctness. Yet the final judge of any theory is the rigorous test of experiment, not the fame of its inventor or the allure of its mathematics. For decades, general relativity has passed test after test with flying colors, including some remarkable new tests using the recently detected gravitational waves.

The volume represents the proceedings of the two international con- ferences (on N umber Theory and Cryptography) held at the Harish- Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad, during December, 2006 and February 2007. As Bertrand Russell puts it "Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture"; for people working in pure mathematics, specially in number theory, no more motivation will be needed to pursue research in the subject.