Rajeev Motwani

Rajeev Motwani was born as the son of Lt. Colonel Hotchand Motwani and Namita Motwani at Jammu on the 24 March 1962. As father was Army personnel so family has to move from place to place, major part of Childhood of Rajeev was spending at Deolali [Nasik] and Delhi. Once when asked Rajeev said that he got reading habit inheritance as entire family was fond of reading and books like 10 great scientists or five famous mathematicians had influenced him to develop urge of becoming Mathematician like Gauss though father desire to make him a computer expert. This was only after getting admission at IIT Kanpur; I realized that actually Computer Science and Mathematics are the fields of similarities.

IIT Kanpur was initial stage of importing education in Computer Science and during the years of 1970’s Computer Science in entire country was still in its infancy. However, as Rajeev believes that “Purpose of programming is not just coding; it is to formulate the problem” and fortunately he got inspiring faculty like Professor Kesav Nori so nothing was much difficult for him. Rajeev went to UC Berkeley after B.Tech. In 1983 and completed Ph.D. in 1988.

Once again like the 1983, weather to go US for further studies or do the job offered in India, Rajeev was in double mindset of returning back to India or stay at US. Don Knuth, one of the founding fathers of computer science, came over to meet Rajeev’s advisor and told him that they wanted to hire someone young for algorithms at Stanford. This helped Rajeev and he decided to join as a Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University. His all research was focused on theoretical computer science. He went on wrote books like “Randomized Algorithms” and Introduction to “Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation”.

In the May 1989, Rajeev met with Asha Jadeja, graduated from the University of Southern California, they married on 22 March 1990. By this time Rajeev got fame of famous scientist, entrepreneur, and mentor, as he was the brain behind many internet Start-ups and even investor for many based at Stanford US. He helped Brin and Page in 1998 to found Google but before that he founded the Mining Data at Stanford project (MIDAS), an umbrella organization for several groups looking into new and innovative data management concepts.

June 5, 2009 brought the unfortunate news about Rajeev Motwani as he was found dead in his pool in the backyard of his Atherton home. In tribute to Rajeev Motwani, Sergy Brin said, “Officially, Rajeev was not my advisor, and yet he played just as big a role in my research, education, and professional development. In addition to being a brilliant computer scientist, Rajeev was a very kind and amicable person and his door was always open. No matter what was going on with my life or work, I could always stop by his office for an interesting conversation and a friendly smile”.

Larry Page remembered him, “Rajeev was a wise theoretician that had the rare knack and desire to turn theory into practical applications. Rajeev was always willing to lend an ear and a brain to anyone, even to me as a confused student. With his always open door and clever insights, Rajeev was instrumental in the early work that led to Google.” I would like to conclude with “Today, whenever you use a piece of technology, there is a good chance a little bit of Rajeev Motwani is behind it”.