V. Rajaraman : The teacher who built India’s computing mind, no more

When a teacher departs, the blackboards weep. A generation of learners, spread across the world, pause and go back in time, overwhelmed by a quiet sense of gratitude and loss.
Such is life, and such is India’s timeless Guru–Shishya parampara, where many jambavans silently walk the corridors of knowledge, leaving behind an imprint that endures long after they are gone.
Professor Vaidyeswaran Rajaraman was one of them.

He passed away on 8 November 2025 in Bengaluru, aged 92. For India’s technology community, it feels as if a quiet light has gone out.

In 1997, Dataquest had the honour of presenting him the Lifetime Achievement Award. It was one of those rare moments when the industry paused to recognise a teacher. Prof Rajaraman accepted it with the calm dignity that defined him, reminding everyone that progress begins not in boardrooms, but in classrooms.

A life well lived

Born on 8 September 1933 to Ramaswami Vaidyeswaran and Sarada in Erode, then part of the Madras Presidency, Prof Rajaraman’s early years reflected the curiosity of a mind destined for discovery. He passed the Higher Secondary Certificate examination in 1949 as part of the first batch of Madras Education Association (now DTEA) Higher Secondary School, New Delhi.

He went on to earn a BSc (Honours) in Physics from St Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, in 1952, followed by a Diploma in Electrical Communication Engineering from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore in 1955. He stayed on at IISc to design and construct non-linear units for an analogue computer, applying them to engineering problems. That work earned him an Associateship from IISc in 1957.

Awarded an overseas scholarship by the Government of India, he joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and obtained his MSc in Electrical Engineering in 1959. He then pursued doctoral research on adaptive control systems at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, completing his PhD in 1961. His early academic career began there as an Assistant Professor of Statistics, before he returned to India in 1962 to join the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur) as an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering.

A visiting stint at the University of California, Berkeley in 1965–66 proved to be a turning point. It was during this period that he shifted his focus to the then nascent discipline of computer science, a choice that would shape the technological destiny of an entire country.

At IIT Kanpur, with the support of colleagues and leadership, he helped start a new MTech programme with Computer Science as an option in the mid-1960s, the first time the subject was offered as an academic discipline in India. He later helped introduce a doctoral programme in the field, and in 1978 he initiated the first BTech programme in Computer Science at IIT Kanpur with an initial batch of 20 students. A group led by him also pioneered the use of decision tables in the development, debugging, and optimisation of complex computer programmes.

He became a Senior Professor at IIT Kanpur in 1974 and stayed there till 1982. During this period he also contributed to real-time control systems for projects such as the Bhilai Steel Plant and designed training modules for Tata Consultancy Services, while shaping computer science curricula for bodies like the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).

He then moved to IISc Bangalore, where he developed low-cost parallel computers and helped build a supercomputing facility, serving as Chairman of the Supercomputer Education and Research Centre (SERC) from 1982 to 1994. During his years at IIT Kanpur and IISc, he guided around 30 doctoral students and published over 70 scientific papers in national and international journals.

His work was never about machines alone. It was about people who could think logically, communicate clearly, and solve problems elegantly. He wrote 23 textbooks that became staples in classrooms across India, including early works on computer programming, numerical methods, computer organisation, digital logic, and parallel computers. His History of Computing in India: 1955–2010, written at the invitation of the IEEE Computer Society, remains a landmark chronicle of how a young nation learned to compute with imagination and purpose.

Beyond academia, he played a quiet but decisive role in policy and institution building. As a member of the Electronics Commission and the Science Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, he chaired the committee that recommended the now-famous Master of Computer Applications (MCA) programme to address the impending talent shortage for the IT industry. The same period saw him chair the committee that proposed the creation of the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) to build indigenous supercomputers using parallel computing. He later served on C-DAC’s governing council in its formative years.

In Karnataka, he advised the state government on several e-governance initiatives, including the Bhoomi land records computerisation project and the Kaveri project for digitising property registration. For him, computing was never an abstract pursuit. It was a tool to make systems fairer, more efficient, and more transparent.

Prof Rajaraman was a Fellow of all four major Indian science academies and held fellowships of professional bodies such as the Computer Society of India and the Institute of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers. His many honours included the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize (1976), the Padma Bhushan (1998), the Lifetime Contribution Award in Engineering from the Indian National Academy of Engineering, and Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Computer Society of India, Dataquest, and the Systems Society of India.

Yet his true reward was seeing his students succeed. He believed that teaching was an act of nation-building, and he lived that belief every day.

He taught humanity, and also tech

To measure his legacy only in awards or institutions would be to miss its essence. His real contribution was the mindset he built, one that valued clarity over complexity, thought over noise, and purpose over power.

As we remember him, we remember a teacher who made India think differently.
In an age fascinated by artificial intelligence, his life reminds us that the most powerful intelligence is still human.

 A Life that was: Prof Vaidyeswaran Rajaraman (1933–2025)

Born: 8 September 1933, Erode, Madras Presidency (now Tamil Nadu)

Died: 8 November 2025, Bengaluru

Parents: Ramaswami Vaidyeswaran and Sarada

Education:

BSc (Honours) in Physics, St Stephen’s College, University of Delhi (1952)

Diploma in Electrical Communication Engineering, IISc Bangalore (1955)

Associateship, IISc (1957)

MSc in Electrical Engineering, MIT (1959)

PhD, University of Wisconsin–Madison (1961)

Academic roles:

Assistant Professor of Statistics, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Assistant / later Senior Professor, IIT Kanpur

Chairman, Supercomputer Education and Research Centre (SERC), IISc (1982–1994)

Key contributions:

Helped start India’s first MTech and later BTech programmes in Computer Science at IIT Kanpur

Pioneered use of decision tables in software development

Guided around 30 PhD students and published over 70 research papers

Chaired committees that recommended the MCA programme and the creation of C-DAC

Advised Karnataka government on landmark e-governance projects such as Bhoomi and Kaveri

Publications: 23 textbooks and the monograph History of Computing in India: 1955–2010

Honours: Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize (1976); Padma Bhushan (1998); Lifetime Contribution Award in Engineering (INAE); Lifetime Achievement Awards from Computer Society of India, Dataquest, and Systems Society of India.

All heroes do not wear capes. Some stand quietly behind a podium, shaping generations without seeking the spotlight. Professor Rajaraman was one of them. He did not chase greatness; he became it, by simply doing what he was destined for: teaching a nation how to think.