R Balasubramanian obtained his BSc and MSc in Mathematics from Sri Pushpam College, Madras University. He joined as a graduate student in Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai and worked with Professor K Ramachandra to obtain his PhD degree (1979) from Bombay University. He then moved to Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai (1985) and became its Director in 2000.

Academic and Research Achievements: The research of Balasubramanian mainly centres around Analytic Number Theory. His contributions include: (i) the improvement of the error term in the mean square of Riemann zeta function (over a result of Titchmarsh in 1934) and distance between the zeros of zeta function on the critical line (over a result of Hardy in 1914); (ii) a lower bound for the 2k-th mean of a Dirichlet Series; (iii) the application of the lower bound for omega results for zeta function; (iv) the application of the lower bound for studying the omega resuts for arithmetic functions; (v) the upperbound for the error term in the summatory function of arithmetic functions like n d(n); and (vi) the real zeros of L-functions, mostly with Ramachandra. He, along with his foreign co-workers, showed that every integer is representable as a sum of almost nineteen biquadrates (a conjecture of Waring since 1773). His other collaborative works were on Graham's gcd conjecture; the elliptic curve discrete log problem; parametrized complexity of vertex cover problem; the Erdos Woods conjecture; on the hypergeometric series, etc.

Awards and Honours: Balasubramanian is a recipient of SS Bhatnagar Award of CSIR (1990), the BM Birla Award (1990), Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Merite (2000), Srinivasa Ramanujan Birth Centenary Award of Indian Science Congress (2000) and Padma Shri (2006).