Prof. R Narasimhan

Recently, I was going through the December 2007 issue of the monthly publication from Computer Society of India { CSI Communications }.
[ CSI site : www.csi-india.org ]
This issue presents a “ Special Tribute to Prof. R Narasimhan, Founder President of CSI”
While my mind pointer was over Dr.S Ramani’s article (and compilation ) on Prof. R N, I got a link to “Science Today”. I just clicked, and did a quick research in ST. As a member of CSI, and as a lover of ST, I think, this is the best way I can pay my homage to this great soul.

Prof. R Narasimhan, the great personality and doyen of Indian Computer Science, did contribute to “Science Today”. To put it in a different way, ST and its readers were fortunate to have him in ST, with his interesting and thought provoking articles.
Here is a brief account of what I found in ST, about Prof RN and his contributions in ST.

Science Today, January 1971
In this issue of ST, “FOCUS”, was introduced. This is a new column intended to pose the problems of the Scientific Policy that affect our present and future national development. The first in this series, was from Dr. RN. The introduction says “ … the first contributor to these columns is Prof. R Narasimhan of the Computer Group at TIFR, who is also a keen student of the science policy”. The topic was :
“On Indian Science and Technology”
The article starts with the ‘Science Policy Resolution ( SPR ) adopted by Government of India in 1958; and later review by Committee on Science and Technology (COST) during 1970.
He concludes the article thus :
“ The 64,000 Dollar question
Who should now work out the objectives for Science and Technology for India along the lines discussed above ? Should COST do it , or the Planning Commission ? Or, should, perhaps, the Indian National Academy of Science ? Or, should the Scientists at large ? Or, should we, perhaps, give this as a contract to some American consultancy agency ?”

Science Today, October 1971

“Science and Bumbledom”
This is a book review by Prof. R N.
The book “ The Medvedev papers” by Dr. Zhores A Medvedev, translated from Russian by Vera Rich.
The review gives a treatise on two articles by the Russian (Soviet) researcher Dr. Zhores Medvedev. The focus is on ‘fruitful meetings between scientists of the world’ and ‘secrecy of correspondence as guaranteed by law’.

Prof.RN emphasizes that Medvedev’s discussions in these articles are of utmost value to scientists of other countries.


Science Today, November 1973

“What is Science really about ?”
This article is based on the work done by him during his Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship, during 1971-73. The article, added with a few cartoons, is very interesting. He talks about Science and Commonsense, scientific theories, their analysis, and experimentation. “ If someone wants to know what are scientific theories theories of, the answer is : they are theories of experiments” !

Science Today, December 1973.

“What is Science really about ?- Part II
Science begins with the question why something happens and exploratory experiments are carried out to construct a theory. Again, further sets of experiments are required to verify the theory. Prof. RN links the physical sciences, behavioural sciences and social relevance to explain how Science and Technology had developed and grown.

Science Today, August 1977

“Academic Science and Technological Culture – Some lessons from history”

Starting with a question, “Does excellence in science lead to a technological culture ?”, Prof RN analyses ‘how did the west overtake the eastern nations from which it had borrowed the technologies in the first place? History has a few answers.’

Science Today, November 1977

“Memory and Language Behaviour”
Prof RN talks on the brain, listening, speech, language disorders (Aphasia), remembering, and about the human mechanism of understanding and behaviour.
( This article is followed by another interesting article by Dr. S. Ramani, on “Models of Memory”. )

Science Toady, January 1981

Under the column “Viewpoints”, Prof. RN wrote on “ A new world Information and Communication order ?”

In this article, he refers to the MacBride Commission Report ( an International Commission for the study of Communication problems, headed by Sean MacBride of Ireland, with 16 members ). He presents the problem of inbalance and dominance of the North over the South in all aspects relating to Information and Communication. He stresses on the “Information-starved societies”.

Look at the following interesting data appended to the article.
Average telecommunications investment per annum, as a percentage of total GDP (during 1965-75).

UK                    1.23
Switzerland     1.13
Japan               1.05
U S                   0.83
Malaysia          0.34
Pakistan          0.32
Kenya              0.30
India                0.17


Science Today, September 1982

The Information Economy
“ a penetrating analysis of the role of IT in industrialized economies and its relevance to India “
“ Information has become an economic commodity and is beginning to play a dominant role in shaping the economic profiles of advanced countries. How it is relevant to India.”
‘ … Digital communication technology is to the service sector, what electrical technology was to the manufacturing sector.”

The article analyses the impact of IT on employment, business and industry; and its relevance to India.
“ ….. the technologies, thus, instead of causing job retrenchment, are likely to remove manpower bottlenecks and facilitate growth of output. “

Science Today, February 1989.

Interview : R Narasimhan
By R. Chandrasekhar, NCST and Prabhakar Nair, Asst Editor, ScienceToday (2001)

Focus : On the Scope and Limitations of Artificial Intelligence systems.

Prof. RN, to the questions on this field, puts very clear and concise answers. He starts with defining AI, and puts his views on the present state of AI, and the future prospects.

“Q : Can machines replace the human beings someday ?
A: To me, this is a non-question, because we simply don’t know what the human being is …… to ask whether it can be replaced …. Since we know so little about the brain and the mind, talking about replacing it by an artifact doesn’t make sense to me at present “

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Please see the snippets of articles, cartoons, and a caricature of Prof. RN.