Hansraj Gupta did his PhD (1936) in Mathematics from the Panjab University, Lahore. His specialization was in number theory and combinatorics. He was Principal, Government College, Chandigarh (1957); the Professor and Head, Department of Mathematics, the Director, Centre for Advanced Study in Mathematics (1966), Honorary Professor of Mathematics, University of Panjab, Chandigarh; and Visiting Professor, at the Universities of Colorado, Arizona and Alberta.

Academic and Research Achievements: Gupta’s main contributions were to the theory of numbers and combinatories. His work on partitions proved a conjecture of Ramanujan to be partly incorrect, leading to its revision. He gave a simple proof of a theorem of Erdos and Lehner; proved the Churchhouse conjecture. He was well-known for his perpetual calendar.

Other Contributions: Gupta published many monographs in the field of his specialization, two major works being Table of Partitions (Royal Society of London) and Representations of Primes by Quadratic Forms. He served on the Editorial Board of Indian Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics.

Awards and Honours: Gupta received Medal and Certificate of Merit of British Empire Exhibition (1924). He was the President, Mathematics Section of the Indian Science Congress (1964) and also the recipient of Mathematical Association of India Award (1979). Gupta was a Fellow of National Academy of Sciences (India), Member of Indian Mathematical Society (also President, 1963), Edinburgh Mathematical Society and American Mathematical Society.