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Madhava of Sańgamagrama (c. 1350 – c. 1425 CE) was a prominent Kerala mathematician-astronomer from the town of Irinnalakkuta near Cochin, Kerala, India. He is considered the founder of the Kerala School of Astronomy and Mathematics. He was the first to have developed infinite series approximations for a range of trigonometric functions, which has been called the "decisive step onward from the finite procedures of ancient mathematics to treat their limit-passage to infinity". His discoveries opened the doors to what has today come to be known as Mathematical Analysis. One of the greatest mathematician-astronomers of the Middle Ages, Madhavan made pioneering contributions to the study of infinite series, calculus, trigonometry, geometry and algebra.

Some scholars have also suggested that Madhava's work, through the writings of the Kerala School, may have been transmitted to Europe via Jesuit missionaries and traders who were active around the ancient port of Muziris at the time. As a result, it may have had an influence on later European developments in analysis and calculus.

 

Mahavira (9th-centuryCE) was a Jain mathematician from Gulbarga. who asserted that the square root of a negative number did not exist. He gave the sum of a series whose terms are squares of an arithmetical progression and empirical rules for area and perimeter of an ellipse. He was patronised by the great Rashtrakuta king Amoghavarsha. Mahavira was the author of Ganit Saar Sangraha. He separated Astrology from Mathematics. He expounded on the same subjects on which Aryabhata and Brahmagupta contended, but he expressed them more clearly. He is highly respected among Indian Mathematicians, because of his establishment of terminology for concepts such as equilateral, and isosceles triangle; rhombus; circle and semicircle. Mahavira's eminence spread in all South India and his books proved inspirational to other Mathematicians in Southern India. It was translated into Telugu language by PavuluriMallana as Saar SangrahaGanitam.
 
 

Mahalanobis, Prasanta Chandra (1893- 1972) was an applied statistician. He is best known for the Mahalanobis distance, a statistical measure. He did pioneering work on anthropometric variation in India. He founded the Indian Statistical Institute, and contributed to large scale sample surveys. He graduated in Physics in 1912 from the Presidency College, Kolkata and completed Tripos at King's College, Cambridge. He then returned to Calcutta and started his statistical work. Initially he worked on analyzing university exam results, anthropometric measurements on Anglo-Indians of Calcutta and some metrological problems. He also worked as a meteorologist for some time. His most important contributions are related to large scale sample surveys. He introduced the concept of pilot surveys and advocated the usefulness of sampling methods. His name is also associated with the scale free multivariate distance measure, the Mahalanobis distance. He founded the Indian Statistical Institute in 1931. In later life, he contributed prominently to newly independent India's five-year plans starting from the second. His variant of Wassily Leontief's Input-output model was employed in the second and later plans to work towards rapid

industrialisation of India and with his colleagues at his institute, he played a key role in developing the required statistical infrastructure. He was Director of the Indian Statistical Institute and the Honorary Statistical Advisor to the Cabinet of the Government of India. He had got Weldon Medal from Oxford University in 1944 and Padma Vibhushan in 1968. He was also elected a fellow of the Royal Society, London in 1945 and Honorary President of International Statistical Institute in 1957.

 

Manava (750BC - 690 BCE) was the author of one of the Sulbasutras: documents containing some of the earliest Indian mathematics. He belongs to the age of 750BC - 690 BC. Manavawas the author of one of the Sulbasutras. Manava's Sulbasutra, like all the Sulbasutras, contained approximate constructions of circles from rectangles, and squares from circles, which can be thought of as giving approximate values of π. There appear therefore different values of πthroughout the Sulbasutra, essentially every construction involving circles leads to a different such approximation. Manava's work which give π = 25/8 = 3.125.