We all wish that someone taught math the easiest way. But P.K.Srinivasan is gifted Mathematician as well as a Maths teacher had been doing exactly that all through his life.
He lived over 80 years and during those sixty years he spent on maths education, he tried his best in removing the maths phobia and makes maths as fun subject.
He was not satisfied from the way mathematics was taught, so he decided to become a teacher hemself.
He loved children and helped them develop a curiosity and raise questions or doubts in maths. His principles were Gandhian, wearing Kadhi / Cotton cloths like Nehru Cap /Jibba / Panjakachha veshtee throughout his life, and carried that attire and travelled to many parts of the world. He was also a pure Vegetarian and teetotaler. He never believed education should be attached to cost or price.
P.K. Srinivasan also collected over 10,000 books from all over the world for his reference. He left those valuable books for the future generation when left the mortal world.
His son Kannan Srinivasan dedicated the collections as PKS Maths Library to the Maths lovers, teachers, mathematicians and research scholars for their reference.
Kannan says, “Books related to all the relevant titles like Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, etc., are available in this library and is free to use at the library. It is not a lending library, but it is a Reference Library.”
Kannan is also planning to organise Maths Workshops for Children.
Kannan Srinivasan adds “Our father believed in detecting and nurturing mathematics talent at the pre-school level. He believed that a true and successful teacher was one who never ceased to be a student. For over four decades he held an unwavering torch for the spread and appreciation of mathematics education in India and all over the world,”
“PKS was full of energy and would most times be immersed in the propagation of mathematics that he would even forget us. He ate, breathed and even dreamed in mathematics that once when he had to tell a house number to a rickshaw man in Delhi, he said the address was 100 minus 2.”
PKS also wrote over 60 books. The PKS Research Foundation, a non-profit voluntary organization that aims to remove phobia of mathematics, was also launched by his son earlier.
Ten crores, ten acres and ten years are what he had always dreamed of for the permanent exhibition of mathematics he wanted to set up in Madras, says Kannan.
Mr. P. K. Srinivasan remained a devotee and disciple of Ramanujan, the great mathematician. He brought out two valuable volumes of Ramanujam work and other relevant materials and got it published in 1968.
P.K. Srinivasan Mathematics Library is at 14/20, 25th Street, Thillai Ganga Nagar, Nanganallur. Phone no. 22670754