Subbayya Sivasankaranarayana Pillai

Biography Subbayya Sivasankaranarayana Pillai was born to parents Subbayya Pillai and Gomati Ammal. His mother died a year after his birth and his father when Pillai was in his last year at school.

In 1927, Pillai was awarded a research fellowship at the University of Madras to work among professors K. Ananda Rau and Ramaswamy S. Vaidyanathaswamy. He was from 1929 to 1941 at Annamalai University where he worked as a lecturer. It was in Annamalai University that he did his major work in Waring's problem.

For his achievements he was invited in August 1950, for a year to visit the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, United States. He was also invited to participate in the International Congress of Mathematicians at Harvard University as a delegate of the Madras University but he died during the crash of TWA Flight 903 in Egypt on the way to the conference.

Contributions He proved the Waring's problem for in 1935 under the further condition of ahead of Leonard Eugene Dickson who around the same time proved it for

He showed that where is the largest natural number and hence computed the precise value of .