Chaitan and Sarita Gupta

In 1960, Chaitan P. Gupta was awarded the gold medal for being the top Math M.A. student at Delhi University. Two years later, a student named Sarita was awarded the same honor. In between, he was her tutor and she his pupil with the both of them falling in love with mathematics. The subject became an integral part of their future plotting the course on what they would do next and where they would go. Separately, each of them opted to go to the United States for graduate study in mathematics. It was a low probability endeavor because the United States was admitting only 1000 Indians per year. Despite this, both of them obtained student visas due in large part to their mathematical prowess. He went first in 1962 and stayed connected with his former pupil through letter writing. What started as a tutor-student relationship blossomed into an intercontinental courtship. They married in 1965. Four years later after completing their graduate studies, they came to Northern Illinois University where he became a Professor and she a Math Instructor. Together at NIU until 1992, he carried out his professorial duties, she her teaching assignments, and the both of them raised a family in DeKalb, IL. The scholarship is a tribute to their numerical partnership. May every awardee of this scholarship beat the odds as they did and realize their statistically improbable dreams.