Ganesh Prasad earned his DSc from the University of Allahabad. His areas of specialization were mathematics and physics. He was Professor of Queen’s College, Varanasi and the first Rashbehary Ghose Professor of Applied Mathematics (1914-18) and Hardinge Professor of Mathematics (1923-36), University of Calcutta.

Academic and Research Achievements: Ganesh Prasad worked on the potentials of ellipsoids of variable densities. He put forth a method of expansion of certain functions in a series of types, the constitution of matter, the analytical theory of heat and ‘expansion of an arbitrary function’ in a series of spherical harmonics. This work was translated into German. He also worked on the failure of Lebesgue’s criterion.

Other Contributions: Ganesh Prasad’s lectures on the introduction to the theory of elliptic functions and higher transcendentals were published (1928). His treatise on Spherical Harmonics and Functions of Bessel and Lame was published in two parts (1930, 1932). Another outstanding work of Ganesh Prasad is the book Some Great Mathematicians of the Nineteenth Century (two volumes).

Awards and Honours: Ganesh Prasad was the President, Mathematics and Physics Section of the Indian Science Congress (1932). He was also the President, Calcutta Mathematical Society and Life President of the Banaras Mathematical Society.