Pune, Jul 17 (IANS): Acclaimed mathematician Dr Mangala J. Narlikar, passed away after a year-long battle with cancer, early on Monday, a former colleague said here.

She was 80 and is survived by her husband, the eminent astrophysicist and cosmologist Dr Jayant Narlikar, and their three daughters Leelavati, Girija and Geeta.

Her last rites shall be performed at a crematorium here later this afternoon, said the colleague.

Born in Mumbai on May 17, 1943, Narlikar topped the MA (Maths) stream of the University of Mumbai in 1964, and joined as a researcher at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research's School of Mathematics for two years.

Later, she went to the University of Cambridge and taught at the undergraduate school till 1969 and again returned to TIFR as a teacher till 1980, and in between she earned her PhD in Mathematics from the University of Mumbai.

Dr Narlikar's core fields of interest were real and complex analysis, analytic geometry, numbers theory, algebra and topology, and she carried out research in pure mathematics.

Over the years, she taught at the University of Mumbai, University of Pune, and also the MSc students at the Bhaskaracharya Pratishthana, delivered lectures in other institutions in India and abroad, authored several scholarly research papers on mathematics and wrote two books on the subject, and strongly espoused the cause of women in science.