Chandigarh, May 26 -- Former Panjab University (PU) vice-chancellor and eminent mathematician professor RP Bambah passed away in his sleep at his Sector 19 residence on Monday morning.

He was 99 and would have turned 100 in September. As per university officials, Bambah had expressed his wish to donate his body to PGIMER for medical research, which his two daughters will honour. Thus, there will be no cremation.

Professor Bambah, a Padma Bhushan awardee, had served as PU vice-chancellor from 1985 to 1991 and remained the president of the Indian Mathematical Society in 1969.

A scholar of global repute, he was known for his pioneering work in number theory and discrete geometry, especially in lattice coverings and Ramanujan's Tau Functio...