Raman Parimala earned her BSc degree (1968) and MSc (1970) from the University of Madras and PhD (1976) from University of Bombay, specializing in Algebra.

Academic and Research Achievements: Following the affirmative solution in 1976 by Quillen-Suslin of Serre's conjecture on projective modules over polynomial rings, Parimala constructed remarkable counterexamples to a quadratic analogue of Serre's conjecture. This worked to a whole lot of results relating to principal bundles under linear algebraic groups over affine spaces. Her work on the unramified cohomology of real algebraic varieties placed in higher dimensional setting a theorem of Witt on separation of connected components of real algebraic curves by the Brauer group. Her solution, jointly with Eva Bayer-Fluckiger, of Serre's conjecture on triviality of principal homogeneous spaces under semisimple simply connected linear algebraic groups over fields of cohomological dimension 2 and real analogues of this conjecture are significant in the context of study of linear algebraic groups and homogeneous spaces in more general contexts than global fields.In a recent work with V. Suresh, she settled in the affirmative a longstanding conjecture of Kaplansky that every quadratic form in at least nine variables over function fields of nondyadic p-adic curves has a nontrivial zero.

Other Contributions: Professor Parimala served as an INSA Council Member (2000-02).

Awards and Honours: Parimala is a recipient of the Bhatnagar Prize for Mathematical Sciences (1987), Docteur Honoris Causa from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland (1999), Jawaharlal Nehru Birth Centenary Lecture (2004) and Srinivasa Ramanujan Medal of INSA (2006) and the TWAS prize for Mathematical Sciences (2006). She is a Fellow, Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore and the National Academy of Sciences (India), Allahabad.