Gupta was born 9 October 1902 in
Rawalpindi, then part of
British India. His father was Gulraj Gupta, an executive engineer with the
Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway. He studied at the
Panjab University in
Lahore, where he graduated with a
M.A. in 1925. In 1928 he became a
lecturer at the Government College in
Hoshiarpur. He received his
Ph.D. from the Panjab University in 1936. By then he had already published several papers on
partitions. Gupta was elected a
fellow of the
Indian National Science Academy (INSA) in 1950. He became head of the Panjab University's new department of
mathematics in 1954. He served as president of the
Indian Mathematical Society (IMS) for the term 1963–64. He retired as director of the Centre of Advanced Study in Mathematics in 1966, by which time he was already travelling
North America as a
visiting professor: at the
University of Colorado at Boulder (1962), the
University of Arizona (1966), and the
University of Alberta (1969). He represented the INSA at the 1974
International Congress of Mathematicians in
Vancouver. He continued actively researching and publishing mathematics for many years after retirement. Gupta died 23 November 1988. Since 1990 the annual IMS conference has included a lecture in his honour, the Hansraj Gupta Memorial Award Lecture. ==Selected publications==