Indian NASA worker completed 3-year BSc in Maths degree in one year, went to University of Berkeley, was hailed as ‘Genius of Genius' before becoming a teacher at IIT. Then he lost everything: ‘Was seen near garbage…'

One of India’s most brilliant minds was later lost to schizophrenia, and his utterly glorious career was cut short. Vashishtha Narayan Singh’s rise to global acclaim was meteoric, and his decline was sharp. Most tragically, none of it was his fault.

A Child Prodigy

According to a Business Standard report, Vashishtha Narayan Singh was born in 1942 in a poor household in Vasantpur village. His father worked as a police constable. He was sent to Netarhat Residential School, which was one of the top government schools in east India at the time, after completing his elementary schooling since he was a gifted student. In both the 1957 matriculation exam and the 1961 intermediate exam, he placed first in the state. After that, he was accepted to Science College in Patna, where he chose mathematics as his honours subject. Here, he got to know Professor John L. Kelly, who led the University of California, Berkeley's (UCB) mathematics department.

Such was his brilliance that he was allowed by Patna University to appear in the two-year course of B.Sc (Hons) in Mathematics in its very first year. Singh finished the three-year graduation programme in just one year; therefore, Patna University had to modify its policies for him.

A Meteoric Rise

The visiting Kelly was so impressed by Singh's natural aptitude for mathematics that he extended an invitation to the young Bihari boy to continue his education at Berkeley. He even organised scholarships for Singh to continue his education at UCB and paid for his plane ticket.

Singh graduated. with a summa cum laude’ from Berkeley. He was appointed director of Columbia University of Mathematics in 1967, and in 1969 he wrote "The Peace of Space Theory", in which he refuted Einstein's "Theory of Relativity", according to ETV Bharat. He was named a "Genius of Genius" by Berkeley University.

"Reproducing Kernels and Operators with Cyclic Vector" was the title of his well-regarded PhD dissertation.

After completing his further education, Singh worked at NASA before returning to India in 1971 to teach at IIT Kanpur, according to a report in the Hindustan Times. As per the ETV Bharat report, during his stint at NASA, before Apollo was launched, 31 computers were reportedly shut down for a while, and after they were fixed, Vashishtha's calculations and those of the computers were identical. He then became a member of Mumbai's Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. He became a permanent faculty member at the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata in 1973.

A Devastating Downfall

In 1973, Singh wed Vandana Rani Singh; the couple separated in 1976. Later on, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He was admitted to the Central Institute of Psychiatry in Kanke (now in Jharkhand) in the late 1970s as his health worsened, and he stayed there until 1985

Singh went back to his hometown of Basantpur in 1987. He vanished in 1989 while travelling by rail to Pune, and four years later, in 1993, he was discovered in Doriganj, close to Chhapra in the Saran district. After that, he was admitted to Bangalore's National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS). He received care at the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences (IHBAS) in Delhi in 2002. Singh returned home from IHBAS in 2009, according to the Business Standard report.

Singh was named a visiting professor at Bhupendra Narayan Mandal University (BNMU) in 2014. As per the ETV Bharat report, Singh would be spotted investigating trash heaps while he was unwell, and his actions made news. He was also the subject of a satirical caricature by well-known cartoonist Pawan Toon. In the final days of Singh's life, Toon was reportedly quite close to him.

On November 14, 2019, Singh died. He received the Padma Shri posthumously in honour of his contributions to mathematics.