The Hindu Business Line : Pioneering visionary passes away

The Indian IT industry lost a pioneering visionary today. Dr R. Narasimhan, the first chairman of CMC and a life-long supporter of the IT industry, passed away in Bangalore leaving behind a commitment to an industry he helped get off the ground and nurture over the last few decades.

After completing his degree in Telecommunications Engineering from Madras University in 1947, he went on to study in the US, getting an MS in Electrical Engineering from the prestigious California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and a PhD in Mathematics from Indiana University.

Dr Narasimhan returned to India after his doctorate at Indiana University in the US and joined the group of scientists being put together by Homi Bhabha at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in 1959.

The first full-scale, general purpose, electronic digital computer designed and built in India, at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Automatic Calculator (TIFRAC), was completed in 1959 and commissioned in February 1960. It was designed by Dr Narasimhan and built by a team of six people.

He played a key role in the setting of the then Computer Maintenance Corporation (CMC), which later became a full-fledged computer company under his chairmanship.

Association with CMC

When IBM finally closed down its operations in India in 1978, CMC took over the maintenance of IBM installations at over 800 locations around India. Though Dr Narasimhan’s three-year term as chairman of CMC concluded in September 1979, he continued his close association with the corporation and was conferred the title of CMC Fellow. His distinguished presence in the Bangalore offices of CMC has always a source of inspiration and pride for all CMC-ites.

Achievements

Visionaries like Dr Narasimhan have been very important in building the industry and the entire IT community cherishes his contribution to computer science. Other than pure research, he was also keen on how IT could be deployed to serve the bulk of the population. He encouraged his colleagues to work on nationally relevant problems in the areas of computer science and technology and helped undertake some early initiatives at CMC that lay strong foundations for that organisation.

As an informal advisor to the Government of India, he helped the Government to look at various aspects of computer science and technology over a couple of decades.

Widely respected in the scientific community, Dr Narasimhan helped found the Computer Society of India. Apart from numerous articles in scientific journals and edited volumes, he has written four books in the area of artificial intelligence and linguistics.

He had been conferred many awards, including the Padma Shree in 1976, the Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship for 1971-73, the UGC’s Homi J Bhabha Award in 1976, the Om Prakash Bhasin Foundation Award in 1988, and the Dataquest Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1994.

When TCS bought a majority stake in CMC during the government’s disinvestment programme some years ago, Dr Narasimhan was present at the function when the company was formally handed over to TCS. Mr Ramadorai remember him saying that he felt that with this change in ownership, “CMC was in safe hands”.

Dr Narasimhan leaves behind a rich legacy that will always be remembered by the IT industry and CMC.