Mohsen Hashtroodi

Biography

Mohsen Hashtroodi was a prominent Iranian mathematician, known as ‘Professor Hashtroodi’. His father, Shaikh Esmaeel Mojtahed was an advisor to Shaikh Mohammad Khiabani, who played a significant role in the establishment of the parliamentary democracy in Iran during and after the Iranian Constitutional Revolution.
Mohsen Hashtroodi attended ‘Sirus’ and ‘Aghdasieh’ primary schools in Tehran and subsequently studied at the elite school of ‘Dar ol-Fonoon’, in Tehran, from where he graduated in 1925. He obtained his doctoral degree in mathematics in 1936 as student of Élie Cartan in France. His doctoral dissertation (Sur les espaces d'éléments à connexion projective normale) was on differential geometry. By significantly generalizing the work of Cartan to the case of hypersurfaces in ℝⁿ, he constructed a projective connection used in studying systems of differential equations known as the Hachtroudi Connection. His subsequent research involved using intrinsically defined affine and Weylian connections to study the invariants of differential systems relative to different groups of transformations. 
He was a Distinguished Professor at University of Tabriz and University of Tehran. One of the Prizes of Iranian Mathematical Society is named after Professor Hashtroodi. 
Mohsen Hashtroodi married Robab Modiri in 1944. They had two daughters, Faranak and Fariba, and one son, Ramin.
In 1959, he became a member of the Iranian Association of the International Space Union. In 1960, he took charge as Head of the Students' Trade Union Organization, which became the basis for the foundation of the Graduate Center. In 1963, he served as the editor-in-chief of ‘Ketab-e Hafteh’ journal of Kayhan newspaper. In the same year, he collaborated Abdul Hossein Mushafi to launch a mathematics journal. In 1964 he joined the National Committee for Mathematical Sciences. 
In 1969, he finally retired. In the same year, he became a member of the Board of Trustees of Qazvin Higher School of Administrative and Commercial Sciences for three years. In 1970, following the first International Mathematics Conference in Tehran University, he received the Distinguished Professor Certificate of Tehran university.
Professor Hashtroudi had a great expertise in expressing scientific principles and phenomena and new technologies in simple language and always emphasized the importance of basic sciences. He was also interested in philosophy, poetry and music. During his professional life, in addition to training many students, he wrote dozens of articles and several book.
He finally died in September 4, 1976 and is buried in the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery in Tehran.
In recognition of his years of scientific and cultural services, the Society for the Appreciation of Cultural Works and Dignitaries (SACWD) honored him the title of ‘Iran`s dignitary’ in a commemoration ceremony on May 19, 2001.
 

Works

Among his many published works are:
Books
•    The World of Thought, Knowledge and Art
•    The Theory of Numbers
•    Shadows (collection of poems)
•    The Course of Human Thought
•    From Classical Mechanics to Quantum Mechanics 

Articles
•    The Universe according to Einstein's Theory of Relativity
•    Khayyam or the Mathematician Poet