Rangaswamy Narasimhan
| Rangaswamy Narasimhan | |
|---|---|
| Born |
April 17, 1926 Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India |
| Died | September 3, 2007 (aged 81) Bengaluru, Karnataka, India |
| Occupation | Computer and cognitive scientist |
| Years active | 1954-2007 |
| Known for | TIFRAC-the first Indian indigenous computer |
| Awards |
Padma Shri Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship UGC Homi J. Bhabha Award Om Prakash Bhasin Award Dataquest Lifetime Achievement Award |
Rangaswamy Narasimhan (1926–2007) was an Indian computer and cognitive scientist, regarded by many as the father of computer science research in India. He led the team which developed the TIFRAC, the first Indian indigenous computer and was instrumental in the establishment of CMC Limited in 1975, a Government of India company, later bought by Tata Consultancy Services. He was a recipient of the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma Shri from the Government of India in 1977.
Dr. Narasimhan was a pioneer in the field of computer sciences in India and the principal architect of India’s first indigenous computer, TIFRAC. I would rate him as the scientific equivalent of the linguist-philosopher Dr. Noam Chomsky in this country for his work relating to language, linguistics and cognitive sciences, said M. G. K. Menon, on hearing about Narasimhan's death.
Rangaswamy Narasimhan was born on 17 April 1926 in Chennai in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. He graduated with honours in Telecommunication engineering from College of Engineering, Guindy, then part of University of Madras in 1947 and moved to US to obtain his master's degree (MS) in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology. He stayed in US to secure a doctoral degree (PhD) in mathematics from Indiana University.
In 1954, he returned to India, accepting Homi J. Bhabha's invitation to join the project team set up by the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, (TIFR) Mumbai for the development of the first indigenous computer. Five years later, the prototype of the computer was ready and the computer was inaugurated by the then prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, who named the equipment as Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Automatic Calculator (TIFRAC). In 1961, he went back to Illinois, US to conduct further research on cognitive science at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and worked as a visiting scientist at the Digital Computer Laboratory of the university till 1964. His next assignment at TIFR was the establishment of a software development centre and that is reported to have paved way for the founding of the National Center for Software Development and Computing Techniques (NCSDCT) under TIFR. The institution was later renamed as the National Centre for Software Technology and was merged into the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) in 2003.
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