Prof. R Narasimhan (known as RN), was a pioneer in the field of Computer Science; and considered as the Father of Computer Science in India. He joined TIFR in the 1950's and was the senior member of the team that built the India's first indigenous electronic digital Computer known as TIFRAC (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Automatic Computer). He was a director of NCSDCT (National Centre for Software Development and Computing Techniques) in TIFR for a decade between 1975-1985, and this institution later turned into a separate autonomous organization called NCST (National centre for software technology; which I joined in 2001 in NCST as a Staff Scientist) and now part of CDAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing).
Prof RN, has authored many books and papers, and had interests in AI and linguistics. He had won many awards and has played the role of informal advisor on many occasions to the Government of India. He was instrumental in the formation of CMC, now part of the Tata group. In one way, he was also instrumental for the development of this niche IT sector in this country.
He passed away on 3rd of September 2007, and a number of them whom he had mentored and/or worked with attended his funeral, Myself and many of my senior staffs were also present on that day. A lot about him and his work could be found at:
http://prof.r.narasimhan.googlepages.com/I had an opportunity to do a small task for him, a few years back, while he was writing his book on 'Artificial Intelligence and Study of Agentive Behaviour'. He was nearing 80 years at that time, and wanted to help him in scanning a few photographs for his book. The photographs were containing 'kolams' (similar to rangoli), where he was trying to illustrate the concept of patterns being created by joining different dots, as done in a kolam. He was always insisting for perfection, and as I was doing, was questioning about the technicalities of the scanner such as the depth, color, and time taken etc... for the process of scanning. I understood that he was a soft man, seeking absolute perfection.
It was ironic, that I compiled his photographs into a silent film to be played while observing silence as a mark of respect to his soul, by a huge gathering of Who's who of the Indian computer science researchers, at the annual CSI National Convention held last month. In this regard, I also got an opportunity to work with yet another leader in the field of research in Indian computer science - Dr. S. Ramani.
