C. K. Raju (born 7 March 1954) is an Indian computer scientist, mathematician, educator, and physicist.
Raju was born on 7 March 1954 in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, India. He obtained a B.Sc. degree from the Institute of Science, Mumbai in 1973, an M.Sc. from the University of Mumbai in 1975, and a Ph.D. from the Indian Statistical Institute in 1980.
During the early 1980s, Raju was a faculty member at the Department of Statistics at the University of Pune, teaching mathematics. He was a key contributor to the first Indian supercomputer, PARAM (1988âÂÂ91). He has also engaged in amateur historical research, including claiming that the Jesuits brought calculus to Europe from India. 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, but 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 belief that Albert Einstein's theories of special and general relativity relied 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 constituted 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.
Raju's positions regarding the historical origins of calculus, the priority of Einstein's discovery of special and general relativity relative to 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 has been viewed as part of an ethnonationalist right-wing cultural movement in India spearheaded by the Bharatiya Janata Party to frame Indian (and particularly Hindu) mathematics, physics, and culture in general as inherently superior to that of all others and in particular "wronged" by Western forces.
Raju received the Telesio-Galilei Academy Award in 2010 for several claimed accomplishments in physics. However, Telesio-Galilei Academy was generally considered a highly scientifically fringe organization at best, and stopped giving out awards entirely after 2013 following a series of investigations in 2012.