Meet man who studied at IIT Kanpur, went to US for job, then decided to become a monk at 30 because….

New Delhi: Every year we see thousands of students slogging hard to score high marks so that they can fulfil their dreams of becoming an engineer. For that, they need admissions in prestigious colleges and institutes after completing their class 12 exams. Those who clear class 12 work hard to get admission into the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) via clearing the IIT JEE exams.

After graduating from IIT, most students get good and high package job offers in India and abroad and they move ahead towards achieving even greater success. This has been the norm more or less.

But there are some who follow their hearts and choose completely different paths. Here, we tell you about one such man who cleared the IIT and later became a monk.

He is Mahan Maharaj, born Mahan Mitra in 1968. He is also known as Mahan Mj and Swami Vidyanathananda.

Mahan Maharaj is an Indian mathematician and monk of the Ramakrishna Order who currently works as a Professor of Mathematics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai. He is known for his work in hyperbolic geometry, geometric group theory, low-dimensional topology, and complex geometry.

He studied at St. Xavier’s Collegiate School, Calcutta till Class 12th. He then went to IIT Kanpur after securing an All India Rank (AIR) of 67 in the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE). He wanted to study electrical engineering initially but later switched to mathematics and graduated with a Masters in Mathematics from IIT Kanpur in 1992.

Mahan Mj then joined the Ph.D. program at the University of California, Berkeley, in mathematics. He worked for a short time at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai in 1998 after completing his doctorate from UC Berkeley.

He was a Professor of Mathematics and Dean of Research at the Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda University till 2015.

Mahan Mj refused a high-paying job and rather became a monk of the Ramakrishna order in 1998. With fluency in English, Hindi, and Bengali, he also understands the Tamil language after living in the southern part of India at IMSc. “I am enjoying being a monk as much as I enjoy my mathematics,” he said about being a monk.