Professor Raja Raman was of course a stalwart. Unfortunately, by the time I joined IIT Kanpur, within a year he moved to IISc Bangalore, so I did not have an opportunity to sit through a course by him. Academically, he was my grandfather and his student Professor Biswas was my PhD thesis supervisor.
I have met him multiple times over the past many years and every single time he was very generous with his comments and thoughts.
As a student, we were reading his programming books, whether it is FORTRAN, COBOL, PASCAL, and we all really learned our programming. The first steps in programming were achieved thanks to his help. And this is not just true with us, it's true all over the country. He was in many ways the founder of computer science education in this country.
So, his passing away is in many sense an end of an era. But what he has done for the computer science education, what for the country, is immense. The strength of our country in computer science today, which is recognized worldwide, it all began with Professor Rajaraman.
I feel it's a great privilege that IIT Kanpur was his playground during those years. The institute's name, therefore, is permanently associated with computer science education in the country. We hope that his legacy that he established, we are collectively able to carry forward and continue to make the institute a major player in the computer science domain.
Thank you.
