Lexington, Ky. (Oct. 28, 2009) - Bringing together the arts and sciences to create a rounded educational experience is the specialty of the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences – so it should be no surprise that this year’s Paul G. Blazer Lecture in the Humanities  speaker will be a person who has excelled as a mathematician, essayist and novelist. Manil Suri, author of several essays and two books including recent bestseller “The Age of Shiva” (Norton, January 2009) will visit UK to speak on “The Mathematics of Fiction.” The annual lecture is sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences , and will take place at 7:30 p.m., Oct. 29, in Memorial Hall.

“The College of Arts and Sciences is excited to welcome Manil Suri to campus. His expertise in mathematics and his work as an author of fiction highlights how the arts and sciences can be united,” said Mark Lawrence Kornbluh, dean of the College.  

Manil Suri was born and raised in Bombay (now Mumbai), India. He came to the United States as a student when he was twenty and now lives in Silver Spring, Md., and is a citizen of both the United States and India. He visits Mumbai often.

Suri’s first published fiction in English was “The Seven Circles”, a short story that appeared in The New Yorker in Feb. 2000. “The Death of Vishnu”, his first novel, debuted worldwide in January 2001. In addition to being published in English by W. W. Norton in the United States and Bloomsbury in the United Kingdom, the novel has been translated into twenty-two other languages. 

Suri was named by Time magazine as a “Person to Watch” in 2000, and he received a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction in 2004.

“Writing ‘The Death of Vishnu’ led me to Hindu mythology and to the great philosophical works of India like the Bhagwad Gita,” Suri said. “It helped me reconnect with a spiritual side of myself that had been dormant for a long time.” 

Of “The Age of Shiva”, Suri said: “With this book, I immersed myself in modern India. I understood what enormous challenges have been met since independence, and what a tremendous bond I have with the country of my birth. It is a source of joy to me that my book is being released in India’s anniversary year of six decades of independence.” 

An August 2007 essay by Suri entitled “What Unites India?” was published in the sixtieth independence-day anniversary issue of India Today.

Suri is also a mathematician. He obtained his doctorate in applied mathematics from Carnegie-Mellon University and is a tenured full professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). 

“Ever since ‘Vishnu’ was a success, people have been asking me whether I am going to quit mathematics. The answer is no. It took me seven years to write my second novel, and having another profession ensured I went only modestly crazy,” said Suri.

While Suri still does mathematical research in the field of numerical analysis, he has been spending increasing amounts of time on mathematics outreach. “Many people like mathematics while in school, but then have no further opportunity to enjoy it. It’s not like art, for which you can go to a museum to satisfy a craving. I’d like to help push mathematics into the cultural arena. Perhaps even put a mathematician on Oprah.” 

The most successful of his outreach projects has been the presentation Taming Infinity, which he even presented at the 2006 International Literature Festival in Berlin. This and other outreach efforts can be accessed through his academic website. (See in particular an excerpt of his short story about mathematicians, The Tolman Trick.)

The Blazer Lecture Series was started in 1950 by Paul G. Blazer, founder of Ashland Oil, Inc., and his wife, Georgia Blazer, the first woman to serve on the UK Board of Trustees. It was their wish that the series enlighten the thinking and challenge the assumptions of faculty, students and the community. To ensure their vision became a reality, the College of Arts and Sciences has hosted more than 100 individuals as Blazer Lecturers including an American President, several Pulitzer Prize winners, a Nobel Laureate, two ambassadors and dozens of distinguished scholars, authors and researchers.

Suri’s talk will take place in Memorial Hall on the University of Kentucky campus. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Amy Hisel in the UK College of Arts and Sciences Office of the Dean at (859) 257-8354.