Course Name: MA 412: Complex Analysis

Credits: 8


Course Type: Theory


Course Instructor: Prof. Akhil Ranjan

Prerequisites: Real Analysis (MA 403)


Important Topic Covered: Complex numbers; notions of limit, continuity, differentiability in the context of complex functions; multi-valued functions, branches, branch cuts; Laurent series, meromorphic functions, poles; Cauchy's integral formula, contour integrals, applications to real integrals; argument principle, Rouche's theorem

Useful Books: Functions of One Complex Variable [John Conway]

Lectures: No attendance requirement. Blackboard only.

Assignments: Selected questions were discussed from the weekly tutorial sheets in the tutorial sessions. No assignments.

Exams and Grading: A total of 4 quizzes were held, out of which best 3 were considered for a total weightage of 30%. The rest of the weightage was in midsem (30%) and endsem (40%). Exam questions were mostly calculation-based, with very limited number of proofs asked.

Advanced follow-up courses: Theory of Analytic Functions (MA 521)

Personal Comments: For me, this course was basically a recap of (a subset of) MA 205. I had expected much more depth since this was an MSc course, but was disappointed with the superfluous attitude with which the various topics were discussed (hand-wavy "proofs", concepts not made rigorous because "they will not be asked in the exam" etc.).

Respondent: Arkya Chatterjee