Thank you, Dr. Majumder

Dr. Jaydeep Majumder (07 June 1972 – 22 July 2009)

Recently I finished the first part of my master’s thesis related to (complex) algebraic geometry. There are not many (useful) books available on this topic, and most of them are very costly. In fact, my college library couldn’t buy enough copies of books in this topic. However, fortunately,  Dr. Jaydeep Majumder‘s books were donated to the library and they will make my thesis possible:

Principles of Algebraic Geometry by Joseph Harris and Phillip Griffiths

Algebraic Curves and Riemann Surfaces by Rick Miranda

Hodge Theory ans Complex Algebraic Geometry – I by Claire Voisin

While reading the books, I assumed that that these books were donated after the death of some old geometer. But I was wrong. He was a young physicist, who barely spent a month at NISER. A heart breaking reason for the books essential for my thesis to exist in the college library.

https://stringsamachar.blogspot.com/2009/07/rip-jaydeep-majumder-1972-2009.html?m=1

Dr. Majumder was a theoretical high energy physicist who did research in String Theory. He obtained his Ph.D. under the supervision of Prof. Ashoke Sen at HRI. He joined NISER as Reader-F in June 2009, and was palnning to teach quantum mechanics during the coming semester. Unfortunately, on 22 July 2009 at the young age of 37 he suffered an untimely death due to brain tumor.

https://sites.google.com/site/jaydeepmajumder2/

I just wanted to say that Dr. Majumder has been of great help even after his death. The knowldege and good deeds never die. I really wish he was still alive and we could discuss the amazing mathematics written in these books.

Introspection

I have written many philosophical blog posts motivated by the idea of existence of reason for everything.  So far I have written (and revised) my point of view regarding topics like Being Alive, Loving Mathematics,  Becoming Mathematician and Dreaming Big.

A more fundamental and more disturbing question is:

Since each and everything is made up of atoms, what is the borderline between a living organism and non-living object.

Clearly, mathematics will fail to answer this question since there are no absolute quantifiers involved. But still we can try deducing an answer from logical arguments. Following video by Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell illustrates my question:

We generally describe living organism as something capable of reproduction, growth and consciousness. So, can we convert anything into living organism by somehow adding artificial intelligence to it? Is internet itself a living organism?

Once you call yourself a living organism, the immediate question is about the purpose of your existence (since we believe that there is reason for everything). So we can use this as a quantifier to classify something as living and non-living. Many people have tried (and failed) to answer this question. I came across a possible answer for this question in the film Kubo and the two strings:

We live to write a story and then become immortal in memories of others in form of our stories.

Kubo and the two strings (© 2016, Focus Features)

I really liked this point of view. Being alive is all about being able to create memories. But this view point is very much human centred since we don’t know how other organisms (like other animals, plants, cells, organelles…) interact. Moreover, non-living objects also have stories associated with them (like monuments, paintings,…). So this view point also fails to capture the central idea for classification of something as living or non-living.

I will be happy to know your viewpoint of being able to classify something as living or non-living.