What title did K. Chandrasekharan hold when he overruled Pontryagin at the May 1978 Paris IMU Executive Committee luncheon?

history-of-mathematicssoviet-unionfields-medalinstitutionsverification

claim-pontryagin-opposed-margulis-fields-medal-at-imu-executive-committee-paris-1978 describes K. Chandrasekharan overruling Pontryagin's objection to Margulis's Fields Medal at the May 1978 Paris luncheon, "with the full support of all the others present." The note's original 2026-08-24 promotion (from a MacTutor secondary) called him "IMU President Chandrasekharan." A direct read of Olli Lehto's Mathematics Without Borders (this vault's 2026-08-25 capture) did not itself state a title for Chandrasekharan in that scene — but the same capture's own entity-candidate research describes him as "IMU Secretary (1961–1966)," and separately identifies Deane Montgomery as "IMU President 1975–1978" — i.e., the sitting IMU President in May 1978 was apparently Montgomery, not Chandrasekharan.

Why it matters. The claim-note's framing implicitly treats Chandrasekharan's rebuttal as carrying presidential institutional authority. If he held a different role in 1978 (past President, Vice President, or simply an Executive Committee member whose standing came from having written the IMU's own "Prehistory" and being close to Lehto), the scene's institutional-authority framing should be corrected — not the fact that he rebutted Pontryagin and the room sided with him, which is well attested, but the weight that rebuttal carried.

What would answer it: A direct read of the surrounding pages of Lehto's book (beyond the luncheon paragraph itself — the book's front matter or an officer list likely states IMU officer terms directly), or the IMU's own published list of Presidents/Secretaries/Executive Committee members by term, cross-checked against Montgomery's 1975–1978 presidency.

Candidate next move. The same PDF already fetched for this session's capture (mathunion.org, sha256 4aaed130c5195c493c9d16a19ec012499d39b7a930aefacfa2d3ab261ee0e6b5) likely contains an officer-by-term appendix or index; a targeted re-read for Chandrasekharan's full title history would probably settle this without a new fetch.