Phoolan Prasad obtained BSc and MSc from the Presidency College, Calcutta University; and PhD (1968) from Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. He joined IISc in 1967 as Lecturer in the Department of Applied Mathematics and became Professor in 1977. He was Postdoctoral Fellow at Leeds University (1970-72), Alexander-von-Humboldt Fellow (1980-81) and has been Visiting Professor in several universities in UK, Germany, Astria, Italy, USA and Belgium; Distinguished Chair of MSIL Professorship at IISc (1993-96); Chairman of the Department of Mathematics (1996-2000); and Honorary Professor of IISc and DAE-Raja Ramanna Fellow (2006- 2011).

Academic and Research Achievements: Prasad worked on the analysis and computation with novel mathematical models of some unexplained physical phenomena. His notable findings relate to neutral stability of multi-dimensional transonic flows, resolution of a caustic by nonlinearity, existence of a dispersive wave at the interface in a sedimentation process, formulation of kinematical conservation laws and their application to study beautiful geometrical shapes and their interaction properties on a non-linear wave front. He has written/edited 3 books and guided 13 PhD students.

Other Contributions: Professor Prasad worked to transform the Department of Mathematics at IISc and to establish the IISc Mathematics Initiative. He was one of the first few members (as Visiting Professor) with which Mehta Research Institute (renamed as Harischandra Institute), Allahabad started. He was Member of the National Board for Higher Mathematics (1986-96).

Awards and Honours: Prasad was awarded the SS Bhatnagar Prize (1983). He was elected Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (India), Allahabad (1977), Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore (1985), Vice President of the Ramanujan Mathematical Society (1999-2001) and then its President (2002-04).