On the campus of the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA),  sits the statue of Aryabhata, heralded as one of India’s first mathematicians and astronomers. 

Aryabhata was born in 476 and discovered the mathematical concept of zero, figured out the irrationality of pi, and described the motion of the planets more than a thousand years before the enlightenment era. In 499 he completed his text, Aryabhatiya, a collection of Hindu mathematics that had been discovered up until that point in history. He was only 23.