# C. K. Raju

C. K. Raju (born 7 March 1954) is an Indian computer scientist, mathematician, educator, and physicist.

## Biography
### Early life

Raju was born on 7 March 1954 in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, India.

### Education

Raju obtained a B.Sc. degree from the Institute of Science, Bombay (1973), an M.Sc. from the Department of Mathematics of the University of Mumbai, Bombay (1975), and a Ph.D. at the Indian Statistical Institute (1980).

### Career

During the early 1980s, Raju was a faculty member at the Department of Statistics, teaching mathematics at the University of Pune. He was a key contributor to the first Indian supercomputer, PARAM (1988–91). He has also engaged in amateur historical research, notably claiming that the Jesuits brought calculus to Europe from India. Despite the fact that certain elements of calculus were developed in India as well as other regions of the world centuries before the notion of calculus was formalized in Europe in the 17th century, no evidence has been found for the claim that calculus itself was brought to Europe from India.
Raju built on E. T. Whittaker's controversial beliefs that Albert Einstein's theories of special and general relativity built on the earlier work of Henri Poincaré. Raju claims that they were "remarkably similar", and that Poincaré published every aspect of special relativity in papers between 1898 and 1905. He also goes further, claiming that Einstein's failure to recognize a claimed need for functional differential equations constitute a mistake that underlies subsequent relativistic physics (a claim with which the broader scientific community widely disagrees), and therefore proposes that relativistic physics be reformulated using functional differential equations. He also introduced the retarded gravitation theory, making use of the same principle as retarded potentials in electromagnetism.
Raju has controversially claimed that the Western philosophy of science, including its aspects that pertain to time and the nature of mathematical proof, are rooted in the theocratic needs of the Roman Catholic Church. He has authored 12 books and dozens of articles, mainly on the subjects of physics, mathematics, and the history and philosophy of science.

### Awards and honors

He received the Telesio-Galilei Academy Award in 2010 for several apparent accomplishments in physics.

## Controversies

Raju's positions regarding the origins of calculus, the priority of Einstein's discovery of special and general relativity relative to Henri Poincaré, the mathematical formulation of Einstein's theories, the retarded gravitation theory, and the origins and functionality of the Western philosophy of science are all widely viewed by the scientific community at large as unsupported, unsupportable, or both. The promotion of his theories by some has been viewed as a part of an ethnonationalist right-wing cultural movement in India spearheaded by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to frame Indian mathematics, physics, and culture in general as inherently superior to that of all others and in particular "wronged" by Western forces.
Furthermore, Telesio-Galilei Academy was generally considered a highly scientifically fringe organization, if scientific at all, and has stopped giving out awards after 2013 following a series of investigations in 2012. As such, Raju's honoring is viewed by many as more reputation-damaging than reputation-improving.