Things that struck me the most about RN are:

1. His open mind. He has always welcomed discussion on any topic, including expression of views that may be contrary to his own, from his students, visitors and colleagues. While a part of this was being a good mentor and a humble and polite human being, I could see that he was truly open-minded and genuinely curious to learn something new. I found this level of open-mindedness shocking for someone whose expertise on that topic was developed by decades-long passionate work.

2. Perseverance and deep thought process. Many of RN's research contributions have involved a thought process that stretched a very long time. For example, my own PhD thesis with RN, which involved convergence of ideas from statistical mechanics, vorticity dynamics and turbulent free shear layers, originated in ideas RN had thought about for twenty years before I joined him. I was inspired by the kind of patience and determination RN has shown.

3. His vibrant life outside science. RN's commitment to science and his work is second to none. This was exemplified by his great desire to get back to his office even a few days before his eventual demise. This, however, did not mean that RN did not have interests outside science. On the contrary, RN had a vibrant life – he loved travel and appreciated good food. I fondly recollect him mentioning how he drove across the United States, and then travelled all over Europe and visited a few more countries on the way, on his journey back to India after his PhD at Caltech. He enjoyed driving and was passionate about learning the history, geography and culture of the places he visited. I am glad I drove on the pacific coast highway in California and visited the National museum of Korea in Seoul, on his recommendation. I have had many enjoyable discussions with him on travel, both his and mine. RN used to treat his students to a good dinner whenever the setting was appropriate. He had great knowledge of different cuisines – I have cherished memories of him discussing the history of idlis, explaining what a 'souvlaki ' was, and how otherwise bland European food can be made flavorful.

Saikishan Suryanarayanan
(PhD student with RN at JNCASR from 2009 to 2015)
Research Associate and Lecturer at the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics
UT Austin, USA

Heartbroken by the loss of Professor Roddam Narasimha – the doyen of Indian engineering and science. Though I was neither his student nor have worked with him, I was deeply touched by his generosity, profound thoughts, and superb intellect. Having silently worshipped Dhawan and Narasimha ever since I heard about them; I went to meet him after a cold call sometime in 2014, having joined the IISc Aero Department faculty a few months earlier to that. Realizing that many cold callers have something to ask for, I promised him that I will never ask him for anything, ever. In return got blessed with hours of discussions and deep life lessons in his office overlooking a small waterfall, and our meetings always culminated with coffee at the famous JNC café, Chandriah! We spoke for hours on Dhawan, ISRO, on the “½” appearing in boundary layer thickness to Taylor microscale, turbulence theory, history of Indian science, IISc, and so many other things. When I told him I was leaving IISc, he came to my office at the IISc Aero Department all the way from JNC, and that was the last time we met. I later heard this was quintessential RN, always treating colleagues much junior to him with unmatched dignity. The hours I spent with him was some of the finest time I spent in Bangalore – I wish I had electronically recorded every moment of our conversations. Rest in peace Professor Narasimha, you will be deeply missed by so many whose lives you touched, and your contribution to the nation will be revered for ages. I will miss you so very much!

Swetaprovo Chaudhuri
Associate Professor at the Institute for Aerospace Studies
​University of Toronto, Canada

It is with profound sorrow that we learnt of the passing away of our Fellow and friend, Professor Roddam Narasimha. As a Member of our Academy since 1988, he was deeply committed to the cause and objectives of TWAS and for many years he actively supported us and served on our committees. On behalf of the President, the Council, the entire TWAS membership, and the staff, please accept our most profound condolences for this terrible loss. He will be greatly missed. May he rest in peace.

Prof. Romain Murenzi
TWAS Executive Director

I was introduced to RN by late Prof. M. A. Badrinarayanan when I finished my ME degree at IISc in 1989. I then started my PhD program with RN and Prof. A. Prabhu as co-advisor. It took 5 years to finish my research thesis titled "distorted turbulent spot in a 3-D flow". We published few valuable papers, one among them in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics. During this period he ensured time for discussions and problem solving in his characteristically patient manner. Even though he was very busy with NAL and other engagements, his priority was always his students and in addressing their difficulties. Most of my contemporary students would tell me that I got a great opportunity to work with such an eminent scientist, and I should consider my stay at IISc to be equivalent or better than any other world- renowned University. After finishing my PhD I returned to Iran. It was my pleasure to later host him twice in Iran -- once on an invitation from the Iran Physics Society and the other time when he attended an Asian Fluid Mechanics Congress. Since the time I left India in 1994, I stayed in frequent contact with him. My last conversation with him was on 10th December 2020, and he told me that he is OK. I cannot compare him with any other person in my life -- so kind, humble, generous, cooperative, prompt, and full of knowledge on scientific topics. I will never ever forget him and his memories will me in my heart. With a lot of sorrow and sadness I wish his soul rest in peace and god bless him.

Dr. Mohsen Jahanmiri
Emeritus Associate Professor of Aerospace Engineering
Shiraz University of Technology, Iran

My contact with Roddam was with his history of science side, as we worked together on The History of Classical Indian Science. I spent some time in 2003/2004 at NIAS. I kept a journal and wrote The Sayings of RN all the time. I wrote, after eating out one night, “Such an interesting man, and of course he explains everything, so you feel both full and educated”. I always felt like the smartest, most interesting person when I was with him, when in fact it was he who was the smartest, most interesting of all. We are all so fortunate to have spent any time with a man of such genius, kindness, and humility. I was especially lucky to spend time with his family and with Nagarathna; they were so kind and generous to me. I shall miss Roddam terribly, but I am so glad that my life was touched by him.

Helaine Selin
Science Librarian (retired)
Hampshire College, Massachusetts, USA

I am deeply grieved to learn of the passing away of Prof. Roddam Narasimha. Just this month I was very happy to learn that this year's Chandrasekharendra Saraswati National Eminence Award in Science is being given to him in Mumbai. When I was a PhD student at IISc, he already had a high reputation as an aeronautics engineer. He continued to be a highly respected scientist in the country and abroad. I had occasions to interact with him many times, with great pleasure, when he was Director NAL and Director NIAS. I send my heartfelt condolences to his family, and pray that his soul may be in peace.

Dr. R. Chidambaram
Former Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India

Ever since Prof RN retired from CSIR National Aerospace Laboratories (CSIR-NAL), Dr U N Sinha (UNS), a close associate and a great admirer of Prof RN, made it a point to celebrate Prof RN's birthdays. But UNS had his own idea of doing this. Year after year, he would invite Prof RN on his birthday to NAL and request Prof RN to deliver a lecture. Usually a topic on top of his mind would be picked. Thus began a tradition since 1994. The series ran for 20 years. Prof RN gave lectures on his birthday on a variety of topics. Dr Srinivas Bhogle (who took this picture below) would report the lecture which may still be found on NAL archives. After about 20 years, Prof RN requested that he needs "rest" from this tradition. From then on, a bunch of us led by Dr UNS would go to Prof RN's home on 20th July and wish him well. We would be served with sweets and tea and fascinating conversation to go with it. The picture was taken on 20th July 2019 on the occasion of his 86th birthday. We missed wishing him personally in 2020 owing to Covid-19 situation. Who would have thought that it was the last birthday wish that we could extend in 2019? How things have changed in just about a year!

Dr. Vidyadhar Mudkavi
CSIR 4PI and NAL

Indian aerospace and fluid dynamics scientist Roddam Narasimha, who passed away on 14 December 2020 in Bengaluru at the age of 87, will be remembered not just for scientific brilliance and leadership, but also for an involved brand of mentorship. When Narasimha was awarded the 2019 Nature Awards for Mentoring in Science, the legacy of the 'Narasimha family tree' he was going to leave behind became immediately apparent in the comments his mentees from across the world sent us. As chair of the judging committee for the award, I received stunning feedback from young and mid-career scientists, talking of his non-judgemental openness to students’ thoughts and dissenting opinions, of his insistence on giving credit where it was due. These lesser known but significant nuggets felt like the revered scientist's life was a classic handbook of mentorship.

Here are some samples of what his mentees told us at the time:

“He is completely free of biases based on gender/ caste/ religion/ economic, educational or cultural background. He encouraged diversity decades before it was known by this term.”

“From the very first meeting I had with him, I could feel something special about him from the way he would ask questions and gave suggestions. He taught us to care more for quality than quantity."

“He is never in a hurry to publish anything. He often says “we publish only when we have something to say”, by which he means when we have something actually significant to say."

“Apart from the academics, Professor Narasimha would also discuss history of science, what India needs to do in different fields, how government system works, how science is managed in India and in the West. He would look for problems that are original and could be addressed with the resources we have."

"Many talk about the need to popularise science among the young, but are not clear what to do about it. Professor Narasimha started the journal ‘Resonance’, which is published by the Indian Academy of Sciences. Resonance contains articles on different topics in science and technology written by experts in the field where concepts and ideas are explained in a language that can be understood by high school students."

“Professor Narasimha cares a lot about not being overbearing and is directly critical of no one. He never forced his ideas on others, and gave enough space to others to express their views. At the same time, when stuck with a problem where we do not have sufficient expertise, he had no hesitation in consulting with an expert within or outside the Department. There was no ego of ‘I know everything’."

“The many honors that have come his way have made no difference to Professor Narasimha’s personal endearing qualities: easy accessibility to all -- despite disparities of their station in life (whether a novice student, a distinguished colleague, or a high-level official); the dignity with which he interacts with people of all walks of life; abiding interest in intellectual pursuits and love for scientific truth and scholarship; unprejudiced and disciplined advice that he provides when it is sought; articulation of his thoughts in spoken and written words; the personal example he continues to set, and the inspiration he provides.”

“He teaches that you should be yourself, which speaks best to your own culture; demand high standards only by your own example; work on more than one problem at a time because it enriches your thinking on both; never lose sight of graciousness in personal interactions; be firm when faced with opposition to your ideas but there is no need to make it personal; be open to new ideas, but don’t chase fads.”

"All his students adore him, never have anything negative to say about him, have been re-shaped by their association with him and, thanks in large part to him, have succeeded well in their careers. Even people who have long ago done a masters or a short project with him are keen to identify with his family tree.”

“He always gave a careful ear to our ideas and was never perturbed if we disagreed with him. In fact, he was always alert to the possibility that the youngest student may be right in an argument.”

“Once when I was a student I asked a question in a seminar. The speaker shut me down saying I should not ask dumb questions. Narasimha was in the audience. He immediately admonished the speaker to answer the question, and added that it was not a dumb question because he could see what I had in mind. He repeated the question himself. If he had not thus intervened, I might have become shy of ever publicly asking questions again.”

“At the end of my PhD he nominated me for an Indo-US Fellowship which enabled me to do a postdoc in Caltech. As a mother of a young child and a deeply unconfident person, I had had no plans for a postdoctoral tenure outside Bengaluru and did not dare to dream of a faculty position. It was Narasimha’s ambitions for me that took me to a better future.”

“Narasimha is extremely correct in every way, for example in giving credit for ideas and for work, even in a casual conversation. He is very particular about being factual and never over claiming any importance for our findings. He is inherently fair-minded, one of the most gender-unbiased people, and that includes people many decades younger than him. Each of the above characteristics above has been imbibed by most of his students. I have seen my students impressing upon their students that we of the Narasimha family tree do things this way.”

For many years, Narasimha was a Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science (1962 to 1999), Director of the National Aerospace Laboratories (1984 to 1993) and the Chairman of the Engineering Mechanics Unit at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), then Bangalore. At the end of his long career, he was the DST Year-of-Science Chair Professor at JNCASR and concurrently held the Pratt & Whitney Chair in Science and Engineering at the University of Hyderabad. In 2013, Narasimha was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian award.

After a bachelor degree in engineering from Mysore University (University College of Engineering) in 1953, he worked with Satish Dhawan, regarded as the father of experimental fluid dynamics research in India, during his master's degree from Indian Institute of Science. He then worked with Hans Liepmann at Caltech in the US obtaining his PhD in 1961. In 1982, he founded the Centre for Atmospheric Sciences (now Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences), which he headed until 1989.

For many years he held a visiting position at Caltech as the Clark B Millikan Professor and Sherman Fairchild distinguished scholar. Between 1989 and 1990 he was the Jawaharlal Nehru professor of Engineering at Cambridge University in England. He held visiting positions in many countries worldwide. Narasimha's research focused on transitions between laminar and turbulent flow, the structure of shock waves, various characteristics of fully developed turbulent flow, the fluid dynamics of clouds, near-surface temperature distributions and eddy fluxes in atmospheric boundary layers. He was closely associated with aerospace technology development in India at both technical and policy-making levels.

As Director of NAL he initiated several major technological programmes. He was instrumental in establishing a major parallel computing initiative in India. As President of the Indian Academy of Sciences, he spearheaded a new programme on university education in science. He served on the National Security Advisory Board and the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Indian Prime Minister's Cabinet.

Widely honoured for his research and scientific leadership, he received the Trieste Science Prize by TWAS, the academy of sciences for the developing world, in 2008.

He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and a Foreign Associate of both the US National Academy of Engineering and the US National Academy of Sciences. He was also an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

In India, his distinctions included the Shati Swarup Bhatnagar Prize and the Gujarmal Modi Award among many others. He was a Fellow of all the National Academies of Science and Engineering in the country, and an Honorary Fellow of the Aeronautical Society of India.

When asked what mentoring young scientists meant to him, Narasimha had said,"All I can say is that I try to understand every student I have: his/ her abilities, tastes, passion, commitment, excitement after understanding something, desire to pursue new paths or device new techniques. I do my best to encourage them.”

Subhra Priyadarshini
Editor, Springer Nature (India)

The above was published as an obituary by Nature India (doi:10.1038/india.2020.185)

I knew Prof. Narasimha through my late father, who was his classmate in schooldays at Acharya Patha Shala in Basavanagudi. I recall my father always spoke of him with great affection and admiration. It was a great experience for me to receive the Sir C V Raman Young Scientist Award from his hands in 2001, and to deliver last year, the 8th Roddam Narasimha lecture at IIT Gandhinagar. Over the years, I had interacted with him on some committees, and was always struck by how lightly his many laurels rested on his shoulders - he was unfailingly polite, encouraging, and receptive to the views of young colleagues. Truly a great man in all respects - science, technology, and humanity, and a wonderful role-model to the entire community. In short, he was a scientist's scientist.

Prof. Jayant R. Haritsa

Department of Computational and Data Sciences, IISc

Our Meghadoot
by Amitabh Ashesh

Here, clouds loom in lovely plumes,

Grant agro-literary boons,

Occasionally even strike

With charged knives of light -

Though we don't quite know

The how and why

As their breasts jealously hide

A thermal alchemy inside!

Difficult to probe, intended

To keep us from getting wise...

Until came one who dared make'em

In a lab, under the nose

And in plain sight -

Marking fluid moves with swirls of dye.

That was Professor Roddam Narasimha!

In monsoons, I shall inevitably think of him

He was a living Meghadootam!

A note written on the occasion of the 85th birthday of Prof. Narasimha

There had been some occasions to meet and interact with Prof Narasimha, or RN as he is known to his close associates, during my student days at the Institute. However, I had never imagined that I would get a chance to work with him. The way things worked out was a pure serendipity. It all started with a talk he gave on cumulus clouds at the IISc centenary conference organized by the Aerospace Department in 2009. I had just finished my PhD and was looking for post-doc positions. After his talk I met him and told him that I was very much interested in working on atmospheric flows and whether he knew of any post-doc opportunities abroad. He paused for a while and said somewhat hesitantly that he himself had a position open and whether I wanted to know more about the problem. When I eagerly said yes, somewhat excited by the prospect of working with him, he gave out a hearty laughter (so characteristic of him) and took me through the ideas on the cloud problem he wanted to pursue. It did not take me long to make up my mind.

I have cherished the remarkable years I spent working with RN at JNC. The first thing that struck me was his cheerfulness, which was infectious, and it added greatly to his charm and charisma. It was always wonderful to be with him, discussing on technical matters, chalking out a plan of action for the future work or listening to him talking to another person. Just being in his company was an enlivening experience and it did not always require a verbal communication to connect with him. The research work I did with RN on cumulus cloud flows was a learning experience. He had an ability to hold a research question in mind for a prolonged duration, look at it from various angles, mull over it, grasp the entire scope of it and apply Occam’s razor (or shall we say RN’s razor) to get rid of the peripheral aspects to clearly bring out the essence. While we often jumped to conclusions, he would always be cautious in interpreting results and arriving at a conclusion, examining the premise and the reasoning carefully and then re-examining it until it was precise or at least accurate. I think `reasoning’ has been a prominent feature of his intellect and even in the highly practical experimental matters, like leaking of pipes or failure of heaters, he would advise us to look for the principles to base the solutions on rather than ad-hoc fixes. Another striking feature of RN’s working style had been that he was always available, always approachable. It was clear that he was a very busy person handing many tasks and responsibilities at various levels but he always had enough time to spend with each of us. It never appeared that he was in a hurry and it was therefore possible to discuss any problem in great depth and breadth. In fact, one of my colleagues would make it a point (to an occasional scorn of others in the group) to meet RN every day and RN would enthusiastically welcome him each time! It was amazing to watch how effortlessly he worked on a variety of problems at the same time. For him what was important was that the problem should be interesting; it did not matter whether it was fundamental or applied. At the time I joined his group he had initiated research on as fundamental a problem as developing a statistical theory of a vortex gas and as applied as optimizing wing form for a turboprop aircraft. RN had already made substantial work on the cumulus cloud problem on which I worked during my post-doc at JNC and I am happy to say that we were able to do some very good work together which established his ideas on a firm footing. In some sense we showed that we could bring the real cloud flows down to the earth and produce them in the laboratory. The subsequent work showed that the cumulus cloud flows could also be produced, equally realistically, on the computer.

I have used past tense in outlining my impressions of him above only to recount my stint at JNC which is a thing of past now. It is needless to say that RN still continues to embody all the qualities described above in equal measure. I am fortunate to have been able to continue working with him even after I left JNC and especially after joining the IISc faculty. It amazes me how even at his age he can engage in serious research at the highest level or offer hour-and-a-half lectures at a stretch for the course on turbulence, which he taught at the Aerospace Department last year along with Prof Garry Brown. I sometimes wonder if I, at my age, can match the energy that he possesses even at his age!

RN has been a highly decorated researcher. However, he carries this weight lightly. As a result, while one is awed by his scholarship and achievements, it never becomes a barrier in establishing a personal rapport with him. One feels comfortable and friendly in his company, and that makes him a perfect gentleman in the definition of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. RN is an excellent story-teller and always has in his bag many interesting anecdotes from his versatile career which he narrates with a characteristic charm, much to the delight of the listener. I have personally enjoyed talking to him on various matters, may it be on politics, philosophy, history or the classical Indian thought. His delightful little book which presents his translations of the selected sutras from the ancient Indian work, Yoga-Vasishtha, is a fascinating read. I wish it gets a wider circulation among scientists and researchers.

In my view RN has carved out a space around him by his intellectual austerity and there is a certain sanctity associated with it. One cannot but get touched by it if one’s mind is sensitive enough. Every time I meet him I feel this quality about him and get inspired and refreshed by connecting with it. It has been an honour for me to have known him and worked with him. On the occasion of his 85th Birthday, I would like to wish RN the best in life and many more years of health and good cheer. I offer my pranams with folded hands.

Dr. Sourabh S. Diwan
Indian Institute of Science

The Fellows of the INAE Bengaluru Chapter deeply mourn the sudden passing of one of their most distinguished colleagues, Prof.Roddam Narasimha, on 14th December 2010 in Bengaluru after a brief illness.

Prof Narasimha, as a member of several high-level advisory committees of the Government of India (National Security Advisory Board and the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Member of the Space Commission etc) and as a distinguished academic, policy maker, and administrator has hugely contributed to the promotion of the practice of engineering & technology and the related sciences, particularly in the field of aerospace and atmospheric sciences, and their application to solving problems of national importance, which is the primary goal of INAE. He has also provided valuable inputs for the promotion of aerospace technologies, aerospace education, aerospace R&D and industry in the country. In Karnataka, the Government of Karnataka has often consulted him on various technology issues concerning the state, and he has been closely associated with the initiation and progression of several major aerospace programmes such as LCA Tejas, Small Civil aircraft HANSA, SARAS, and later RTA feasibility studies etc in Bengaluru-based organisations such as ADA, ISRO, CSIR-NAL, DRDO, IISc etc.

In recognition of his valuable contributions to the field of S&T and the country, Prof. Narasimha has been conferred with several distinguished national and international honours, awards and recognitions, including the prestigious Padma Vibhushan Award of the Republic of India.

INAE Bengaluru Chapter conveys its heartfelt condolences to Smt. Neelima Narasimha and the family of Prof. Narasimha. His invaluable S&T contributions to Engineering and his good will towards INAE shall be deeply cherished by the Engineering Community in the Country.

Dr. V. K. Aatre
Chair, INAE Bengaluru Chapter

Roddam Narasimha, the Complete Scientist

Roddam Narasimha, one of the country’s most renowned scientists, passed away on December 14, 2020, at the age of 87. Narasimha’s illustrious career, spread over more than six decades, spanned multiple dimensions. His accomplishments in any one of them would be the envy of most aspiring individuals. His research in fluid dynamics and aerospace engineering covered an impressive and daunting mix of fundamental questions in fluid dynamics, atmospheric science, and aerospace technology. In addition to excelling in his research endeavours, Narasimha played prominent roles as an intellectual leader, institution builder, and scientific policy advisor to several governments. His wide-ranging interests included a deep engagement with intellectual traditions in Indian culture and elsewhere, particularly in the realm of the pre-colonial history and epistemology of Indian science and technology. He was an outstanding communicator, extremely lucid and rigorous in formulating the essence of any subject he dwelt on in compelling ways. He was a cherished teacher and mentor to generations of students, and younger colleagues, and was generous with sharing his time and thoughts with those who sought them- of whom there was a large number. He wore the recognition and the accolades he received – which were numerous – lightly, unpretentiously, with grace and dignity.

Early life

Prof. Narasimha grew up in the Basavanagudi area of Bengaluru, imbibing scientific and intellectual interests from his father, R.L. Narasimhayya, well-known for several works on science in Kannada, and his immediate environs, which included Sunday classes with the notable Kannada writer D.V. Gundappa. As a student in Acharya Pathashala, a visit and lecture by C.V. Raman, on the invitation of a dedicated and influential teacher, S. Venkataramaiah, was inspirational (as also recalled by a classmate at the time, C.N.R. Rao). Driven by an early fascination with fluid flows, Narasimha joined the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) after college. He worked with Satish Dhawan, studying the transition from smooth, or laminar, flows to turbulent flows, a theme that is central in diverse contexts in fluid dynamics, to which he returned multiple times in his career. He went on to obtain a PhD at the California Institute of Technology, or Caltech, during which he started theoretical and computational investigations of rarified gas flows. The subject had become topical with the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite, which Narasimha witnessed soon after his arrival at Caltech. As director of the National Aeronautics Laboratory (NAL), he was instrumental in several initiatives, prominent among them the design of the Light Combat Aircraft, the civilian aircraft Saras, parallel computing efforts to study fluid flows and computational modelling of the monsoon. The last of these related to research interests developed earlier at IISc, which led to the establishment of the Centre for Atmospheric Sciences with Narasimha as convenor and later to his playing an important role in the establishment of the Ministry of Earth Sciences. Upon his return to India, to the IISc, Narasimha continued his academic research in fluid dynamics. His investigations and expertise also led to his involvement in India’s aerospace programmes, in which he played several prominent roles over the years, including being a long-standing member of the Space Commission. He also became involved with the aeronautical programmes, both civilian and defence, through investigations of the Avro and later the HF24/25 aircrafts. These involvements eventually led him to take on the role of director of the NAL, during 1984-1993, even while continuing his academic role at the IISc. The fluid dynamics and thermodynamics of the formation of tropical clouds, the cumulus clouds, which he dubbed the “queen of the tropical sky”, formed a long-standing interest that lasted till the end.

The Indian way of science and mathematics

During 1997-2004, Narasimha served as the director of the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), conceived as a centre for wide-ranging interdisciplinary research and programmes. NIAS under Narasimha engaged with diverse themes, from nuclear policy, emerging concerns about the digital divide, history and philosophy, etc. In this period, Narasimha became more actively involved with another abiding interest of his: the course of science and mathematics in India, in comparison with other civilisations, and the differing epistemologies that have been at play. He edited the Encyclopaedia of Classical Indian Sciences (with Helaine Selin) during this time. One way of phrasing a large part of Narasimha’s engagement is to quote A.K. Ramanujan, who asked in a famous essay: “Is there an Indian way of thinking?”. Narasimha engaged with the question of whether there has indeed been an Indian way of doing science and mathematics. He developed and articulated a somewhat surprising new perspective, through the prism of fundamental differences in epistemology that governed Indian approaches to describing nature and that of the West.

Passion for research and Indian history

In his writings on Indian intellectual traditions, Narasimha strove to highlight the rational strands of thought running through them. In discussing the Yoga Vaasishta, he emphasised its emphatic rejection of fate, and was fond of quoting the Kerala mathematician Neelakantha who proclaimed that his results were “rooted in yukti and not in aagamas”. Yukti, which may loosely be translated as clever reasoning or approach – employing human intelligence, skill, to synthesise – in conjunction with observation, leading to validated conclusions – siddhanta – was discussed by Narasimha as playing the role of proof in Western mathematics. Incidentally, the latest supercomputer at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research is named “Yukti” owing to Narasimha’s fondness for this notion! Equally fascinating is Narasimha’s exploration of an episode of Indian technological superiority in relatively recent times, the use of rockets by Tipu Sultan, the ruler of Mysore in his wars against the British. Going beyond the mere narration of this episode, Prof. Narasimha analysed the dynamic that soon resulted in mastering and surpassing of this technology by the British. In discussing such matters of past accomplishment, Narasimha argued passionately for a middle ground between glorification and disdain, based on a thoughtful understanding and interrogation of what has been a long civilisational process. An editorial he wrote in the aftermath of controversies surrounding the 2015 National Science congress contains a noteworthy summary. After his tenure at NIAS, Narasimha returned to academic research, this time at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, working on cumulus clouds, the design of aircraft wings and much else. I had the privilege, in this phase, of interacting with him as a colleague and mentor, who was always there to offer advice and help on occasions when I sought them, generous with his time to participate and speak in several events I was involved with, and most importantly, to open new horizons by sharing his thoughts on whatever interested him at any given time. Prof. Narasimha remained active in research till the end. He and his students were busy modelling cumulus cloud formation on the latest supercomputers until recent months. As of this summer, he was involved in discussions about the dispersal of aerosol droplets in the context of the spread of COVID-19, before illness curtailed his activities. In his engagement with the Indian past and the present, Narasimha could be characterised as a patriot, in an old-fashioned and endearing way. He saw himself as a custodian of Indian civilisational heritage, with a duty to understand the past with clarity. Equally, he saw it as a duty to care for the present in pragmatic ways as he saw fit. He did not take overtly political positions but was engaged with matters of state and society as an advisor, planner, and on many occasions tasked with implementation. Narasimha’s journey has been chronicled caringly by G.S. Bhat and K.R. Sreenivasan in an article in the Living Legends in Indian Science series published in Current Science, and in the engaging and detailed interviews published in Bhavana. Narasimha had a full life and career, which transcended several apparent dichotomies, that of a laboratory scientist and the technocrat, institution builder and scholar, someone engaged with advanced technology and with deep civilisational questions – he straddled these boundaries with ease and did not care for artificial boundaries between whatever he considered intellectually stimulating and worth pursuing. He was the embodiment of the image of a complete scientist and intellectual, but one of an exceedingly rare kind. His presence will be deeply missed, but his example will live on, and undoubtedly inspire future generations.

Prof. Srikanth Sastry
Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research

This article was first published by Gauri Lankesh News and subsequently by The Wire.

Prof. A. S. Vasudeva Murthy
TIFR Centre For Applicable Mathematics

I first met RN in July 2003 during a conference held in his honor on his 70th Birthday, “RN 70”. With childlike curiosity, I had taken his autograph. Even then, during the very first interaction with him, I was thoroughly moved and impressed by his humble and caring nature. I never imagined then that I will get a chance to work with such great man! And, the dream came true in 2012 when I got the rare opportunity to work him as the post-doctoral fellow. His technical and administrative achievements are well known to everyone. So, I will not reiterate those. Instead, in this memoir, I want to share some of my personal experiences with Prof. Narasimha.

I got an opportunity to work with him on both experimental as well as computational fluid dynamics. In the three years’ post-doctoral stint with RN, I was involved in the experiments on formation of the cumulus cloud-like flows in the laboratory tank, and the direct numerical simulation of the round turbulent jet (the work that was still ongoing). I recall once incident when he had come to watch the experiments in the lab. He said, “I cannot help you in performing the experiment, but do call me, and I will be more than happy to do whatever is possible, right from taking the broom and cleaning the space near setup if necessary, to operating the switches!” What extraordinary passion to stay attached to the experiments even at the age of 80 plus years!

Apart from the fluid dynamics knowledge, there were plenty of things to learn from him – the way he approached a problem, the way he used to think on the tools to handle any problem, his ways of analyzing data and figures, the way he used to present his thoughts, clarity in thinking, objectivity in rational thinking, the way he used to keep his office well organized, and his never-ending thirst to keep up with the fast changing technology, and many more! Despite being so busy, he was approachable anytime! He had given the freedom to call him anytime from morning 6 am to night 11:30 pm. Many a times it happened that I sent him some results mid-night, and I received the detailed response to my mails very early morning! There was a lot to learn from him, and I consider myself fortunate that he made a deep impression on my life. I am privileged and blessed to work with this great Guru.

The greatest ability of a teacher, I feel, is that the student should not hesitate or fear of asking any kind of questions, may it be a stupid one. And, I think, RN was epitome of this rare quality! He always felt assured his students that – no question is a bad or less important question. I always felt that I can ask him any doubts, silly, fundamental or advanced. He had fathomed that gap between teacher and student and created the comfortable zone. Among the several interesting discussions over many diverse topics, spanning from fluid dynamics to ancient science to history, that we had, I would like to share about a very interesting discussion that we had in the month of August 2020. I was always intrigued by the concept of Stagnation point. The concept appears to be trivial on prima facie, but somehow, I was uncomfortable with it, and I raised this to RN admitting that I may sound fool asking this question. But he just did not make me comfortable, but also he appreciated that I am still pondering over this topic, and, confirmed that the concept is not so trivial as it appears. Then the discussion on stagnation point did not stagnate and went on for more than an hour in the mid-night. And, once again, I was awestruck that how profound his understanding was on the fundamental topics, and how eager he is to solve the doubts and questions without caring for time and his age!

On a different note, Prof. Narasimha was the person with whom you could discuss your personal problems as well. And, he always tried his best to offer some advice or solution from his wisdom and experiences. He used to offer whatever possible help that he could do. Many a times, he offered his car to his students, be it a need to get some experimental stuff or be it something personal.

I wanted to invite him for dinner at my home. But I was hesitant and felt awkward as I was staying at the Students’ hostel. With a fear that whether he would accept it or not, I dared to invite him, and to my surprise, he immediately agreed to that! That day I realized, how down-to-earth he was and how he had managed to keep himself grounded even with all the awards and recognitions he had!

Over last few years, we (me, Prasanth Prabhakaran and Prof. Narasimha) were working on some papers on the DNS of turbulent jet. When the lockdown due to COVID started in March 2020, we felt that this is the golden opportunity to finish off these long-pending works. We three, sitting in different parts of the world, interacted almost continuously and tried to push the work towards completion. The interactions and the work progressed until September when we got busy with other things. We had decided to take up this work and give finishing touches after our semester gets over in December. I was not in touch with him for last two months and I was unaware of his health conditions. As I was about to finish my all teaching assignments by 14th December, I had planned to call him on December 15th. But the almighty had planned something different! On the 14th December night, I saw that unfortunate mail. A call that I planned for the 15th December didn't happen.

Dr. Sachin Shinde
IIT Kanpur

A legendary intellectual and a greatly endearing mentor

Professor Roddam Narasimha, fondly known as RN to many, passed away at the age of 87 on 14 December 2020. RN, with his exceptional scientific abilities and varied intellectual interests, made many enduring research contributions and left behind a very rich legacy. He was a world-renowned researcher in the areas of fluid dynamics and atmospheric sciences, an aerospace technologist, a scholar of Sanskrit and Kannada, an epistemologist of science and mathematics in ancient India, and an inspiring teacher and mentor. In his six-decade long career, he played several visionary leadership roles in institution-building, national technology programmes, and in science and technology policy. Many former students, colleagues, friends, and admirers of RN have written glowing tributes to him in recent days, and I expect that more such articles will appear in due course as the scientific community slowly comes to terms with his loss.

I had the good fortune to see RN closely through the lens of a student and a young researcher. I worked with him during my undergraduate years as part of a Summer Research Fellowship programme. I distinctly remember being nervous prior to my first meeting with him in the summer of 2008; he was 75 and a legendary figure and I was a 19-year-old BTech student! I was immediately struck by his gentle demeanor and warm persona, and it had an instant soothing effect on my nerves! He was genuinely curious to know more about me and my scientific interests, and modestly offered to help with whatever topic of research I chose. This was in stark contrast to the typical student experience in such fellowship programmes of simply being handed a set of research tasks to be carried out. RN encouraged his students to seek research problems in areas that aroused curiosity and to pursue them in depth. This trait mirrored his own approach to learning and research, and interestingly, led him to become an Aerospace Engineer. As an undergraduate student pursuing a Mechanical Engineering degree at Mysore University in the early 1950s, RN saw a World War II era Spitfire fighter aircraft on display at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) during one of its annual Open Day public events. He was greatly fascinated by its signature elliptical-shaped wing, and grasped that some mathematical theory based on physical principles of fluid dynamics must have resulted in the design. This sparked in him an interest in aeronautics and he decided to pursue a diploma and an associate degree at IISc in the subject following his Bachelor degree, and the rest is history. RN’s curiosity-driven approach to research, long before it became a fashionable term in academic circles, coupled with his intellectual depth and breadth, enabled him to be deeply engaged across a wide spectrum of interests. And often his work had great relevance in the context of India, be it in terms of contemporary technological needs or the unraveling of civilisational scientific contributions (where today's popular discourse unfortunately swings between the extremes of undue glorifications and irrational antipathy).

As a teacher and mentor RN always remained accessible to his students, even during phases of his career when he shouldered demanding administrative and other related responsibilities. Endowed with high levels of patience, he would liberally spend time to carefully explain concepts and ideas, sometimes even the most elementary ones, to students. Though he was often deeply immersed in large-scale technological programmes throughout his entire career, his love for little science from his student days remained intact. One particular incident that illustrates this aspect of RN remains etched in my memory. I was in his office explaining to him in detail a design I had come up with for an experiment and we were debating improvements for it while his office phone rang. He took the call, listened to the person on the other end for about two minutes, and said “thank you for the update, I suggest we cancel this launch and discuss things in detail at the next Space Commission meeting to come up with a new plan.” He hung up the phone, and enthusiastically dove right back into the discussion on the little experiment being set up by an undergraduate student! I often noticed the glee in his eyes when he came by the lab to see experiments as they were being performed. Sometimes the planned experiments would run late into the night, but he would insist on being present lest he miss out on the fun! His enthusiasm and curiosity were contagious and brought out the very best in his students. Though my formal association with RN ended shortly after I obtained my BTech degree, I continued to be in contact with him and visited him often. I greatly valued his advice and have benefited from the same in the subsequent stages of my research career.

In life it is not often that one comes across true greatness, but when it happens it is impossible to miss. RN’s intellectual abilities and achievements combined with his humility, simplicity, work ethic, and integrity made him a singular personality. His life greatly exemplified the finest scientific, intellectual, and cultural traditions of the land. RN’s students and many of his colleagues felt privileged to work with him and became all the better for it. My colleague, Prof. Sourabh Diwan, who worked with RN in the past, aptly says that “RN has carved out a space around him by his intellectual austerity and there is a certain sanctity associated with it — one cannot but get touched by it if one’s mind is sensitive enough.” For those who saw his dynamic personality and knew him well it seems that 87 is a young age to depart — but perhaps our perspective is highly skewed by his extraordinary nature. While his physical presence will be greatly missed, he will continue to live on in the form of his ideas and legacy, and will inspire several generations of scientists to come.

Duvvuri Subrahmanyam
Indian Institute of Science

This article was originally published by Swarajya Magazine.

Prof Narasimha or RN as he was fondly called by many will be remembered as a towering intellectual giant. We would also call him ‘Meshtru’ meaning Master in Kannada, in the sense of a guru or a maestro. Much has been written and spoken about him. I will restrict myself to my experiences.

I first met him about 35 years ago. I had only heard of him. I was then a young PhD student and he was the Director of NAL. I was very overawed to meet him. But his genial smile and gentle way of talking put me at ease. Since then it was always a pleasure to talk to him. He commanded mastery over a wide variety of subjects ranging from Rig Veda to Rocketry. It was always a delight to listen to him on any topic. He made the toughest of subjects such as turbulence look very easy. He had the uncommon knack of coming up with simple solutions to complex problems. A case in point is the simple laboratory experiments he and Prof G S Bhat along with their students conducted to understand the dynamics of cloud-like flows. He also had a rare combination of insight and foresight. I will give a few examples:

In the early 1980s, parallel computing was still very much just an emerging area. He had the foresight to support the development of a parallel computer at NAL. He also foresaw that it could have a huge potential for application in CFD in general and atmospheric modelling in particular. Thanks to his encouragement we developed the first parallel atmospheric model way back in 1986/87, perhaps the first of its kind, even before other organizations in Europe and America did. While we were working on this, he would regularly drop into Flosolver Lab to talk to Dr Sinha and me and encourage us. But for his encouragement and support, it would not have been possible to complete this project successfully. This head start in parallel computing helped in using cutting edge technologies such as DNS well before the rest of the world.

I would like to give another example of his foresight: Way back in the early 2000s he predicted that the future of modelling was data-driven. We were aghast at that time as we couldn’t think of anything other than physics-based models. But today we hear the buzz about AI & ML which is taking over most of the space, and his prediction seems to be largely coming true.

He was a modern scientist steeped in Indian tradition. He had a deep knowledge of ancient Indian knowledge. He had translated and interpreted excerpts from Yoga-Vashista which he called as ‘Verses for the Brave’ and showed how practical it is for today. He also compiled the Encylopedia of Classical Indian Sciences. He could expound at length on any subject: be it Samkhya Philosophy or Tipu’s rockets or Boundary Layer of the Atmosphere. Well after his retirement (not that he ever retired from research!) he came up with a new interpretation of the behaviour of Atmospheric Boundary Layer at low wind speeds. We always had problems in calculating sensible and latent heat fluxes at low wind speeds. He showed, using MONTBLEX data, that these fluxes could be better estimated using free convection formulation rather than conventional forced convection hypothesis. Of course, he was also the mastermind of MONTBLEX - an experiment done largely by Indian across the Indo-Gangetic plain. He trained a generation of scientists who could take up such challenging field experiments. This younger crop of scientists could take on even more challenging field experiments such as BoBMEX, ARMEX, CTCZ, INCOMPASS etc.

He was firmly of the view that study & prediction of Climate and Weather, with particular emphasis on the Monsoons, be improved. To this end, he worked hard and tirelessly to establish CAS, IISc and the Ministry of Earth Sciences. This ministry has made rapid strides in all aspects of prediction and research, and the credit is certainly due to this great visionary. A few years ago, he headed a committee to evaluate the work of IITM. He was appreciative of IITM’s work and gave valuable suggestions on how we could do even better. Sometimes looking at the work done by him, it is difficult to believe that it was done by a single person.

All of us learnt a lot from him. Whether it be science, or ancient religion and philosophy or any other subject, his training is standing in good stead to his shishyas. At any time, faced with a challenging problem, quite often we try to think: ‘How would RN have tackled this problem?’ It invariably helps us to come up with a good solution. We will always cherish his memory.

My heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family.

We will miss you Mesthre!

Prof. Ravi Shankar Nanjundiah
Director, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune

U N Sinha, a close associate and admirer of RN, and himself a legend in fluid dynamics and parallel computing, picked an unusual way to celebrate RN's birthday on 20 July: he would invite RN himself to deliver his birthday lecture at the National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL). RN was embarrassed but bowed to Sinha's wishes. This tradition, that began around 1994, has produced a glittering set of lectures, typically reflecting the thoughts uppermost in RN's mind at that point of time. The document below reproduces original reports of these lectures, written by Srinivas Bhogle (SB), Gopal M Kamath (GMK) and Vidyadhar Y Mudkavi (VYM), as reported in NAL's Information Pasteboard - this NAL newsletter itself being another RN initiative!

Dr. Srinivas Bhogle
CSIR 4PI (and earlier at NAL)

A tribute

On a bus journey long ago, I fell into a chance conversation with the enthusiastic high school student sitting next to me. She confided her dreams in me: she dearly wished to be a pilot. If this didn’t happen, she had a priority list she would go down until something worked out: become an academic researcher in aeronautical engineering, work as cabin crew, air-traffic controller, aeroplane mechanic, airport ground staff, travel agency employee. This was the craziest future plan I’d ever heard, so I told Roddam Narasimha about it. RN’s face lit up in the most excited way and he literally screamed “Where is she? Bring her to see me. Such people are precious!”. He was disappointed that I had not got her contact details. When he was very young, he had been similarly enthralled with aircraft and anything to do with them.

RN made immense contributions to science and to various national missions, and was a builder of institutions. Much has been written about these, so this tribute focuses instead on the unique person he was. He has left a big void in the science world and huge voids in the hearts of large numbers of students, colleagues and friends. He leaves behind his wife, Dr Neelima Narasimha, a doctor, and his daughter, Prof. Maithreyi Narasimha of TIFR.

How the boundary layer in a flow past a solid body (like an aircraft wing) transitions from laminar to turbulent is a crucial question that is not fully resolved. The picture below tells the story of a single-author paper RN wrote at the age of 24 (On the Distribution of Intermittency in the Transition Region of a Boundary Layer. Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences, vol. 24, 711-712, 1957), which completely changed the way this process was understood. This is a top view of a flat plate over which wind blows at a speed U, creating a growing boundary layer. The words at the bottom are in his own hand.

Up to then it was believed that downstream of a particular location, which he here calls xt, turbulent spots were born randomly in space, growing bigger in a self-similar manner by destabilising the neighbourhood as they got convected, until asymptotically taking the boundary layer to fully developed turbulence far downstream. RN realised that this was not consistent with experimental findings. He proposed a ‘concentrated breakdown’ near xt. Upon incorporating this into the model, the ensuing intermittency (fraction of time the flow is turbulent) was a universal function of the streamwise coordinate x when suitably scaled. It agreed very well with a host of experiments. A concentrated breakdown is also on sounder theoretical footing than random breakdown.

The fluid dynamics of clouds was in its infancy when Narasimha started working on it. If a rising cloud, effectively a wet plume, behaved like other plumes, it would dilute itself into annihilation. Narasimha showed, by an ingenious cloud-in-the-lab, by simulations and by scaling arguments, that heating due to condensation along its way is key to reducing entrainment, and indeed to the existence of a cloud. Narasimha and his student KR Sreenivasan in the seventies showed that turbulent flow can relaminarize, and showed that acceleration in the flow provided a mechanism. These are just a few examples showing that he set trends rather than followed them.

I had the privilege of being RN’s PhD student in the Aerospace Department of the Indian Institute of Science as an external student. I was working then at the National Aerospace Labs where RN was Director. Later, I was his colleague in the Fluid Dynamics Unit, which he founded, in the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR). To me and to all his students, RN was a mentor par excellence. His style was to encourage us to define our own problems and research areas, which meant that he mentored students on a range of topics: nonlinear dynamics, mathematical aspects of fluid dynamics, aerospace, atmospheric sciences and the Indian monsoon. He would nudge us to turn our question into something bigger and better and force us to think about the big picture, and about the connections of our work to questions in other areas. And then allow us to sort it out. He thus raised our standards hugely, while appearing to only mentor from the sidelines. He was so busy in those days that I met him for an average of five minutes a few times a year, but was blown away by his insight every time. On boundary layer stability, I was trying to obtain first order corrections to the answer in a small parameter, epsilon. He saw that the effects I was getting were much bigger than O(epsilon), and opined that I had a singular perturbation problem on my hands. Armed with this knowledge, I could derive the correct lowest-order equations for boundary-layer stability, and develop code to predict transition to turbulence over aircraft wings in a few seconds on a PC which were hitherto done on a large mainframe over days. Boeing Aerospace Co. acquired our code and found it useful.

Narasimha was distinguished by his attitude to the conduct of science. The word “rigour” is often used in connection to his approach. He practised rigour in all its forms in his experimental and theoretical work. His meticulous corrections of successive drafts, whether for a publication or merely for circulation within the group, could drive us up a wall, but we learned the value of clarity of expression. He listened carefully, alert to the possibility that the youngest student in the room could be the one who’s right in an argument, and may be the one with the best idea. His ethical standards were exemplary and he was correct to a fault in giving credit, even in a conversation. He was happy to be contradicted, and believed in building a deep familiarity with the opposite point of view before criticizing it. His chance statement to me one day, that “We publish when we have something to say” is a principle that I try to follow.

As a postdoc in CalTech, I met visiting professors from many universities, and realised how high in everyone’s estimation RN was. He was the go-to person when they faced science obstacles. He was always very generous with his ideas. There is a body of important literature, from different countries, which does not bear his name as author, but which has crucial input from him.

He was decades ahead of his time in many matters. At a time when Bengaluru and Delhi were connected by two Air-India flights a day, he realised that India was soon going to need a huge number of short-haul aircraft, and pushed for turboprops as a great solution. He started the Light Transport Aircraft programme at the National Aerospace Laboratories. He pushed for a Bengaluru-Mysuru bullet train and a fast highway, as a solution to many local problems. RN’s inherent sense of democracy and fair-mindedness meant that he incorporated “diversity” naturally in his group, decades before it became a buzzword. He was completely gender-blind and blind to all other distinctions between people. He could therefore deal with people in science, in the government, in administration etc. in a positive and productive way. He made a deep impression on anyone who ever came into contact with him even briefly.

In the eighties and nineties Narasimha taught a famous fluid mechanics course for several hours every Sunday in IISc, which had no text book, no stipulated syllabus, no credits and no exams. A crowd would attend, and would benefit from his unique perspective and mastery over fluid mechanics. He fielded every question with utmost patience.

I would like to best remember him from the tea-table conversations at JNCASR. His original thoughts and detailed investigations, whether on Saki’s writings, on Tipu Sultan’s rockets, on the dynamics of societies which perceive themselves at risk and a whole host of other topics, were discussed over snacks and several cups of tea, and are testimonies of his brilliant mind, his penchant for reading, and his deep understanding of areas outside fluid mechanics.

One of RN’s colleagues termed him a “gentle giant” and I hope the reader has understood why.

Prof. Rama Govindarajan
International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Bengaluru

This article was originally published in an ICTS Newsletter.

Roddam Narasimha, one of India's most distinguished engineer-scientists, has just passed away at 87. He was a man of awesome scholarship who made pioneering contributions to India's space and aeronautical programmes. He epitomized academic brilliance and integrity, and was a great teacher. He was active till the very end, and at this time a year ago he had interacted with the Parliamentary Standing Committee I chair during our study visit to JNCASR in Bengaluru. A rare breed, he followed in the footsteps of his mentor Satish Dhawan in every way. I had known him for years and he was one of my favourite human beings.

Jairam Ramesh
Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha)
Chair, Parliament's Standing Committee on Science & Technology, Environment & Forests

The below article was originally published by Indic Today.

The disappearance of Roddam Narasimha

It is hard to accept that Professor Roddam Narasimha has gone away. We have known him, admired him, and venerated him for almost half a century. Year 2020 had been rough; there was the lockdown, and then there were illnesses and hospitalisations. Our regular Saturday morning chats at Professor Narasimha’s place practically stopped. But one Saturday, this November, after confirming that he was at home, we decided to make an impromptu call. Narasimha was pleased to see us; although decidedly frail, the eyes still had the familiar warm glint. And, when it was time to leave, he walked with us to the door to say goodbye. Narasimha was not just a legendary scientist and an intellectual colossus; he was also incredibly caring and affectionate. As a researcher, leader or thinker, Narasimha’s top three traits were optimism, curiosity and courage. All his life Narasimha was the intrepid adventurer in science and technology; and, when required, he could also be the most committed crusader.

Champion of parallel computing
Consider, for instance, parallel computing. It was the year 1985, Narasimha had just taken over as the Director of National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL), and scientists in NAL’s Fluid Mechanics Division were livid at the poor number-crunching power of NAL’s Univac computer. They met Narasimha to ask for more computing power. Narasimha bounced the problem straight back: “If you are unhappy with Univac, why don’t you build your own fast parallel computer? They’ve built one at Caltech in the U.S. and I am sure we could put together one within a year ourselves.” The big surprise was that NAL actually built India’s first parallel computer, Flosolver, within a year. Flosolver was faster than the existing Univac by at least a factor of three. Funding for Flosolver could have been tricky, but a 10-minute conversation was enough for Narasimha to convince Dr S. Varadarajan, the Director-General of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), to sanction the Rs.20 lakhs needed for the project. The story does not end here. In 1986, at a meeting of the Science Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (SAC-PM), Rajiv Gandhi asked every member to give a 10-minute brief on what their pet project might be. Narasimha chose to talk about parallel computing. “The Prime Minister was so taken up by the idea that 10 minutes became nearly 90 minutes!”, Narasimha later told us. And as word filtered out of the Prime Minister’s interest in parallel computing, every national establishment quickly announced their parallel projects; indeed, the creation of C-DACT, now C-DAC, was almost certainly the outcome of that meeting.

Father of the LCA idea
Narasimha was shy to talk of his role in the development of India’s light combat aircraft (LCA, now Tejas), but there is no doubt that he set the ball rolling. In the late 1970s, Narasimha took time off as a professor at Indian Institute of Science (IISc) to spend a few years with aircraft design teams at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). Based on these interactions, Narasimha argued that it was both feasible and desirable to build a light combat aircraft in large numbers. Narasimha’s arguments achieved a rare resonance: the Indian Air Force (IAF) changed its perception, and Dr Raja Ramanna, the then Scientific Adviser to the Defence Minister, was sufficiently enthused to ask Narasimha to lead a team of experts from the IAF, the HAL, and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) to visit Germany, France, Sweden and England to obtain more insights and data. The team returned with a unanimous verdict endorsing the LCA concept. For the first time, all the principal actors in Indian aeronautics appeared to be on the same page. Later, a high-level committee, headed by Dr S.R. Valluri, which included a bigger contingent of aeronautical players, and of course Narasimha, gave the formal ‘can-go-ahead’ verdict after a detailed feasibility exercise. It then took Defence Minister R. Venkataraman just two minutes to clear the LCA programme.

"I want you here!"
In 1984, NAL was looking for a new director to succeed S.R. Valluri. Narasimha was the best man to succeed Valluri, but he failed to show up for the interview. “I didn’t want it; I liked being a teacher and a researcher more,” he later told us. But when the Chairman, Prof. Satish Dhawan, found Narasimha missing he sent his own car to fetch Narasimha with a brief message: “I want you here!” Narasimha could not say no to Dhawan, who was both his teacher and mentor. He joined as NAL’s third Director in July 1984, just as he turned 51. He would continue at the helm until he retired in July 1993. This was the first big leadership opportunity for Narasimha. There were formidable challenges: money was in short supply, foreign exchange was meagre, computing power was dismal, the crippling self-reliance slogan still ruled, and the worrying disconnect between academia, R&D, industry and users of aerospace technologies persisted. Narasimha’s prescription was a heady mix of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ skills. The hard skills included innovative R&D, winning technology connections, and intelligent mathematical modelling. The soft skills included stronger networking, charismatic leadership, unbridled optimism, and his intense personal charm (it was always a great pleasure to interact with Narasimha). Narasimha also brought in his other traits: of being a visionary (his crystal ball saw things that most others failed to see), of being a science and technology fanatic (“what would I have done in a world without science?,” he once mused), of indomitable courage and confidence (“if there’s a way to do something, we’ll find that way,” he used to say), and of being an inveterate dreamer (he was the first to dream of building India’s own fighter aircraft).

The bigger canvas
As NAL Director, Narasimha made an impressive start; often a great painter simply needs a bigger canvas to show off his ability and repertoire. He entered NAL as the LCA development programme was acquiring greater steam. An early challenge in aircraft development is wind tunnel testing—where you place a scaled-down aircraft model in a narrow and enclosed tunnel, unleash a controlled blast of air from one end, and see how the model ‘behaves’. When the question arose about where the LCA models would be tested, Narasimha naturally assumed that the wind tunnel testing would happen at NAL; after all, NAL’s wind tunnels were built in the late 1960s in preparation for such a challenge. He was horrified when a top decision-making committee in Delhi asked him to agree to the proposal to do the wind tunnel testing abroad, because this was a ‘time-bound’ development programme. Narasimha later told us: “I was NAL’s Director, and I was being asked to agree that NAL couldn’t do this! Nothing could be more preposterous. So, right there, I gave an undertaking that we would complete all the wind tunnel testing … and on schedule.” Eventually, NAL met every commitment; this involved a fundamental change in mindset, and the very style of administration. The wind tunnels worked for two shifts instead of one, and eventually round the clock. Narasimha won because he kindled everyone’s hidden fires, pioneered outsourcing, and, most of all, because everyone wanted Narasimha to win. He had that kind of allure and luminescence.

The Satish Dhawan influence
While Narasimha’s remarkable success as a researcher and academician was probably ordained, Satish Dhawan intervened at the key inflexion points to make sure that Narasimha successfully made the transition from good to great. After completing his “Masters” at IISc in the mid-1950s, Narasimha was not sure if he should look for a job or do research. That’s when Dhawan suggested: “Why don’t you stay here for two years and do some research, and we can have some fun?” And, after two years of fun, when Dhawan realised that he had nothing more to teach Narasimha, he told him: “Now you better go to Caltech.” Narasimha spent some of the best years of his life at Caltech. He recounted so many Caltech stories. Talking of the American reaction to the Sputnik satellite in 1957, he said: “Everyone thought the Soviets were lying, and crowded on terraces to check out. To their great dismay, the bright little speck was indeed seen in the sky at exactly the appointed time.” This Soviet success completely changed the U.S. perspective, and the R&D focus shifted almost overnight from aeronautics to space. This also affected Narasimha’s Caltech research plans. He had hoped to continue his work on turbulence, but research priorities shifted to outer space, where Navier-Stokes equations did not apply, and Narasimha therefore ended up working on rarefied gas dynamics and the Boltzmann equation. But Narasimha was 24, at the prime of his powers, and everything seemed rather easy. His first paper, on rarefied gas dynamics, did not take too long to appear in print. A year later, Narasimha found himself at an international meeting in Berkeley, where someone was talking about his paper and declaring that it was all wrong. “You can imagine my surprise, but my PhD adviser, Prof. Hans W. Liepmann, was supportive. We got chatting with other Caltech mathematicians, and I was reassured that my calculations were correct. It ended well; the speaker in Berkeley came down to Caltech, acknowledged his small error and withdrew the paper.” Narasimha’s confidence soared, and he started earning new respect in the U.S.; “I even earned a few lucrative consultancies while I was still a PhD student,” he recalled. Narasimha was such an engaging raconteur with so many interesting stories to tell. That periodic clearing of the throat, and the engaging smile that frequently broke into a somewhat ironic laugh; we are going to miss all those moments.

Back in India
Narasimha returned to India in 1962 to begin his Indian adventure starting as an assistant professor at IISc. Almost as soon as he returned, Dr. Vikram Sarabhai invited him to Thumba to witness a rocket launch. That visit led to Narasimha doing some useful Monte Carlo calculations for ISRO. At IISc, Narasimha quickly realised that he had to change track; serious computation was then not possible in India. Instead of grumbling about it, he cheerfully embraced theoretical mathematics, and proceeded to work on the “fascinating but neglected problem” of re-laminarisation of turbulent flows, in collaboration with Prof. K.R. Sreenivasan “who was one of our brightest students”. Many consider this to be among Narasimha’s best works.

Multifaceted
How could we describe Roddam Narasimha? “Great scientist and scholar”, “charismatic leader”, “mighty patriot”, “Sherlock Holmes of Indian S&T”, “eminent essayist”? He was arguably all that, and much more. As a young engineering student, Narasimha remembers reading as many Holmes stories as he could; his friend wanted the book back in 48 hours. In the late 1970s, he got to play Sherlock Holmes while assisting the Satish Dhawan one-man committee. The pilots were refusing to fly the HS-748 (Avro) aircraft because they said its climb would be dangerously sluggish if one of the two engines failed. Narasimha enjoyed the adventure; a highlight of which was the IAF test pilot, Wg Cdr P. Ashoka, taking off with one of the Avro engines shut: “Just let my wife know if you see the plane crashing behind the bushes,” he requested before getting airborne. These test flights enabled Narasimha to compile valuable flying data, use it to develop the theory of stochastic corrective processes, and eventually conclude that there was no significant airworthiness issue of concern with the Avro. As he aged, Narasimha became more Mycroft than Sherlock. He once told us: “I have been the chairman of so many investigation teams in aerospace, that I’m not sure I can now recall all of them.” But even he remembers the cloudy morning, sometime in July 1988, when a grim Prof. U.R. Rao, then Chairman, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), walked in to meet him at the NAL Director’s Office. There had been two successive failures of the Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicles ASLV-D1 and ASLV-D2, and U.R. Rao asked Narasimha to head the investigative team. After studies spanning almost a year, Narasimha’s team determined that the failure was due to the brief instability after the first rocket burnt out and before the second rocket fired. “That was a good investigation,” Narasimha recalled. “Since both failures were very similar, we knew that it had to be a design issue.” Soon, thereafter, Narasimha was invited to be a member of the Space Commission; he went on to become the Commission’s longest serving member (1989-2012). As for being an essayist, we recall Narasimha lending us a book about good English writing. It was a slender book, but Narasimha’s ‘learning notes’ in the margins were as profuse as the number of words in the actual book. Good writing, and good scientific communication, was something that Narasimha deeply cared for. As President of the Indian Academy of Sciences (1992-94), he recommended the publication of a journal of science education. The first issue of Resonance appeared on January 1, 1996, and, 25 years later, the journal is still marching ahead strongly. Narasimha’s knowledge of Sanskrit, acquired as a schoolboy (“although my father never considered this knowledge good enough”) coupled with his amazing felicity in the English language, persuaded him to read (and eventually write a book titled Verses for the Brave) about the Yoga Vasistha, believed to span an 18-day dialogue between Rama and the sage Vasistha. “What attracted me the most,” he told us, “was how strongly the verses rejected fate. I was struck by the articulation of such a different philosophy. It was also so forcefully expressed… there was such verve, force, humour, lyricism and logic in the verses that reading them actually became a minor obsession with me."

Hope and Despair in Civil Aviation
Narasimha always talked of the limitless options offered by civil aviation in India: “Civil aviation can be a net creator of wealth; not a consumer of wealth.” During the 1980s and early 1990s, he showed projections to explain how India’s air traffic would soar (at a time when Bangalore had just a dozen daily departures). He used to say: “If Brazil and Indonesia can do it, so can we!” A lot of this enthusiasm got translated into the programme to design and develop the SARAS light transport aircraft. At the 2003 Bangalore air show, Narasimha’s mood was buoyant. “Can it be boom-time for Indian aerospace?,” he asked. And, with his eyes dancing, he said: “Although I’m posing this as a question, I strongly believe that the answer is yes.” When SARAS had a successful first flight on May 29, 2004, Narasimha could not stop smiling: “This is the day I was waiting for a long, long time!” In some ways this was also the last hurrah. At a talk he delivered at NAL on his 73rd birthday in 2006, the optimism had diminished. “Aeronautica is globalizing: Can India afford to keep out?”, Narasimha asked as he ruminated over an “apparent paradox”: “When the basic fundamentals of Indian Aeronautica remain extremely strong, why isn’t that boom coming? We don’t seem to know how to exploit our potential and talent,” he went on, and wondered if the endgame would be a Western group “exploiting our talent the way we can’t ourselves”. In 2010, there was another glimmer of hope with the creation of the National Civil Aircraft Development (NCAD) programme . “This is an extraordinary step in Indian aeronautics. We couldn’t have asked for more!” Narasimha, now 77, and the ‘wise old man’ on NCAD exclaimed, during another lecture at NAL. “It’s going to be an extraordinary challenge…. NAL must learn how to make and ride this approaching wave.” He then proceeded to list the many formidable challenges ahead; it was a most remarkable enunciation. Looking back, one is saddened. Narasimha still had the immense intelligence needed to wage a battle; he knew exactly how the war could be won. He still had abundant will, but was ruefully realising that there might be no way.

Insight and Erudition
Everyone who met Narasimha came away gushing how learned he was, and how charming. His handshake was warm and firm, and his handwriting was exquisite, and almost a work of art. Conversations with him were immensely fulfilling. He was an excellent listener; he endeavoured to listen to every word you said, and if he did not catch the word, he would interrupt you and ask you to repeat. If he did not agree with you, he would start with an embarrassed “well …”, and then proceed to articulate his contrary point of view. He read voraciously, and was a prolific writer. Narasimha was always influential, perhaps never more than during his years as Director, National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS; 1997-2004). His views were sought by individuals in the highest positions of power. He was often consulted on matters of national security. Following India’s nuclear tests, there were many questions asked abroad about India’s true intention. In response, the Indian government prepared its Nuclear Doctrine document; it was drafted almost entirely by Narasimha. Narasimha invoked the alluring idea of ‘computational positivism’ to respond to Needham’s poser: How did modern science come to birth in Pisa, instead of Peking or Patna? While the European method was based on hypotheses, generalisations, deductions and abstraction, Narasimha suggested that the Indian way was based on observation, examination and ingenious specific solutions or inferences; often called yukti. What was ‘proof’ for the Greeks was ‘yukti’ to the Indians, but, somewhere along the way, proof completely overwhelmed and submerged yukti.

The Monsoon and the Clouds
If Dhawan’s big love was birds, for Narasimha it was clouds. As a child, Narasimha admired clouds for their mystique and variety. As a scientist, he realised that India’s well-being was inextricably linked to the monsoon, and the rain that these winds deliver across the country. An accurate rainfall prediction was therefore essential, and among the many actors that play roles in the enormous monsoon drama, the cloud was the prima donna. The best monsoon prediction model would be the one with the best cloud model within. Understanding cloud behaviour therefore became Narasimha’s enduring passion; what troubled him was that we saw clouds every day with our eyes, but yet failed to understand the fundamentals of the phenomenon. So, Narasimha lovingly set up a cloud lab to create cloud-like flows. He was sure that these flows had important and fascinating stories to tell. It did not bother him that he was now 87, and officially old. The karmayogi never wavered from his karma till the very end.

(This tribute draws heavily from G.S. Bhat and K.R. Sreenivasan’s remarkable 2014 note in Current Science, the two wonderful interviews in Bhavana issues of April 2017 and April 2018, and the very exhaustive unpublished transcripts, archived by Dr. Gopal M. Kamath, of our conversations with Narasimha in 2013 and 2014.)

Dr. U.N. Sinha and Dr. Srinivas Bhogle
Honorary Scientists at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-Fourth Paradigm Institute, Bengaluru
Former scientists of the National Aerospace Laboratories, Bengaluru

This article was originally published by The Frontline.

Reminiscences

I did not know professor Narasimha at all till I travelled half the Earth away and suddenly heard of him when he was visiting my graduate school in the US. I made it a point to meet him, and during exchange of pleasantries he told me that he studied at Acharya Patashala (APS), that he lived in NR Colony, and went to Vijaya College before doing Engineering. That information dissipated quickly for me as my thoughts were more focused on the challenges of the day.

Now in Narasimha’s passing I have been thinking and reading a lot. APS was less than two furlongs from where my family lived for a decade between 1964-74. APS field was where we played cricket, gilli-dhanda, and ran old bicycle tires in and out of Bugle Rock. All top dogs in Basavanagudi when they reached high school age, went to National High School (NHS) and I thought that was how it was all the time and should have applied to Narasimha as well.

Neither NHS nor APS stayed in my lexicon after spending time at IIT Madras, where the focus was on going abroad to study. Now I realize that professor CNR Rao also studied at APS, and that these two Stars were batch mates, and that is a great distinction. When I read further, the APS grounds became even more hallowed in my view; RN too had played cricket there as well and the cricket ball would often go to the sidelines where the esteemed writer D. V. Gundappa (DVG) and others would be debating, and they would throw the ball back. Bangalore just after independence, and Basavanagudi in particular, must have been brimming with star-studded energy and the desire to define a new India. It was in Basavanagudi and the Gokhale Institute, started by DVG, where the young Narasimha developed his appreciation of India’s past.

Every morning weekday around 10 AM, our trek to NHS in the early 70s involved going through Gandhi Bazaar. Meeting in front of Ram Mandir, we would head straight and take a left at Netkallappa’s house and enter what is now called DVG Road. As we turned into the street, after a few stores, DVG would be sitting sunning in front of his house on a stone bench as if in complete meditation. It was hard for us to understand the past dynamism of DVG almost twenty-five years earlier, but I am now wondering what DVG was thinking in the 1970s in silent contemplation with most of his work done?

Narasimha found stimulation through the continuity of ancient Indian Rational Thought, from Aryabhata to Nilakantha, to pursue the type of world-class science that he did with indefatigable energy. He found a strong argument in the evidence-based Indian reasoning and always felt that we fell behind in the seventeenth century onwards.

Narasimha, much like DVG, will now be looking over our journey into the future that is riddled with the new challenges of Climate Change, Economic Redistribution, and Healthcare as we strive to improve India’s economic wellbeing and its status in the World.

Dr. Amrutur Anilkumar
Professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
Vanderbilt University, USA

This article was originally published by Deccan Herald.

The 'Cray' supercomputer that the then President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, approved for export to India for use by the India Meteorological Department came loaded with conditions-of-use, which were monitored in-situ by inspection-personnel from the US Embassy in New Delhi. Flosolver (cf. Sinha and Bhogle, above) avenged that humiliation.

There would have been no Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) had RN not met with then PM Indira Gandhi -- who expressed her frustration to him -- as he related to me -- that the "aeronautical community cannot seem to come to a consensus on this". The LCA received its first orders from the IAF after RN had met with the then Raksha Mantri, Pranab Mukherjee about it.

Dr. Venkatasubbaiah Siddhartha
Former Secretary, Science Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (when RN was a member)

Professor Roddam Narasimha (herafter RN), one of India’s leading scientists, researcher and teacher passed away in Bangalore on 14 December 2020 at the age of 87. Having obtained a basic degree in mechanical engineering from UVCE, Bangalore he graduated with a Masters from the Department of Aeronautical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore. At IISc he was mentored by Professor Satish Dhawan, one of the founders of the indigenous Indian space programme and Director of IISc for over 20 years. RN went on to do his PhD under Hans Liepmann, who had also supervised Prof Dhawan, from the prestigious California Institute of Technology (Caltech), in the USA.

RN belonged to that generation of Indian students who pursued higher studies in Europe or the USA and then returned to nourish and build research traditions and capacities in the just turned independent nation, with an insistence on excellence and quality. He was to become Professor at IISc in the now renamed Department of Aerospace Engineering over a near four-decade period. He also served as Director of the CSIR’s National Aerospace Laboratory (NAL), Bangalore, was closely associated with the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) for 14 years and was also Director, National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bangalore. Throughout he maintained a close relationship with IISc. Over the years he received several prestigious awards, including being elected Fellow of the Royal Society.

RN made fundamental contributions to a number of areas in fluid mechanics, especially in the study of turbulence, the application of parallel computing to problems in fluid dynamics, and finally modelling of the monsoon. In a landmark paper published on the vibration of an elastic string, RN derived an equation that has since been named after him. RN took on the challenging task of building scientific institutions in sovereign India very seriously, inspiring students to work on new scientific problems, building a tradition of scientific research while at the same time working on problems relevant to India’s developmental needs. This he did as one involved both as an engineering scientist in India’s aerospace industry and as a policymaker. At NAL he participated in a number of projects such as the development of the indigenous Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), and initiated work on parallel computing for a number of applications.

Two months ago I received an email from RN that was the last I would receive, asking me about when a book a colleague and I had edited would be released. He had an article in this forthcoming volume on German engineering science and its extended genealogy, and its links with Caltech and the India Institute of Science, Bangalore. Like some of the leading scientists of that generation their commitment and work in science in no way exhausted their contributions or personality. He was a scientist well informed about the history of his own discipline, the sciences of the West and India, and made salient contributions to these interdisciplinary fields. In the coming days and weeks many scientists will turn back and reflect upon and commemorate his contribution to the engineering sciences and the fields of investigation and research programmes that germinated from these contributions. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and the aerospace industry, particularly the public sector Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, benefited immensely from RN’s work and that of his colleagues and collaborators.

In what follows I shall not discuss his scientific and technological work for the obituaries by his colleagues and students have addressed them with competence, accuracy and a deep fondness. In the years when I met him frequently there was another side of his immense learning that I encountered and about which I shall present a few reminiscences. This was in the late 1980s and early 1990s when I was working with the history and philosophy of science research programme at NISTADS and had just published my first papers in the philosophy of science and the history of science. Amongst other things I was curious about documenting the vocation of research programmes that commenced at the so-called periphery of the sciences and acquired global visibility. I had come to know of the long commitment of RN’s research group to understanding the ‘onset of turbulence’ and the turn this research programme had taken in RN’s own research. And so I decided to study the programme just mentioned and was affiliated with RN’s group at NAL where he was the Director even while he remained a professor at the Institute of Science. It was agreed that we would meet at his office, not at NAL, at the Centre for Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science that was then located in the building of the Centre for Ecological Studies.

Late on Saturday afternoons after he had met his PhD students and collaborators I would get some time with him. I couldn’t complain for being the last because the discussions were never hurried since nobody was waiting to meet him after me. My queries invariably began with the early attempts of the research group to understand the onset of turbulence and then extended to his and his students’ research on the phenomenon of relaminarization of turbulent flows – an interesting problem in fluid mechanics with applications in the aeronautical industry as well. I was attempting to trace how this research programme evolved over the next decades and the new areas of research that branched out of the same.

While I collected and read papers published by the group I was constantly talking to two former doctoral students, G.S. Bhat and Sudarsh Kailas. The Saturday meetings gradually became occasions to discuss other matters I was researching at the time with my colleague S. Irfan Habib in Delhi and RN took time to comment on some of the drafts I presented him with interest. It didn’t take long to encounter not just the wide breadth of his interests but of his reading on the history of sciences and the history of mathematics. Larger questions on the history and philosophy of science often came up for discussion – and though we agreed upon much, there were many issues about which we thought differently, given the distinct different disciplinary frames we employed to approach the object of discussion – but these differences never came in the way of the interesting and edifying conversations that followed. Though my reading at the time extended beyond the purely internal accounts of the history of sciences and technology, I learned a great deal from his close and nuanced internal accounts of technology at every meeting during those years.

It was around this time that he asked me to look into the life of Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya, the grand old man of Mysore and engineer whose life fascinated RN – not just for the engineering but the larger social context within which the former lived and about which he himself knew a great deal. And here RN was proactive in helping me meet some of the people who were aware of the socio-economic and cultural life of Mysore in the 1930s. So one day we went off to meet the literary icon of old Mysore, Nittur Srinivas Rao, who was then possibly in his late 90s and after having introduced me RN left me to pursue my interviews with him. He promoted a number of such efforts that were collated in a volume he edited entitled Dialogues across Disciplines.

After I returned to my institute in Delhi and our meetings naturally became less frequent, the exchanges continued over email. What continued to intrigue me, as Peter Galison has pointed out in other contexts, was how the empirical, theoretical, matters of instrumentation and personal orientations and resources were so entangled in steering the trajectory of scientific research programmes. For example, how did the interests in relaminarization and the experimental issues that needed to be sorted out in that domain lead up to the Monsoon Boundary Layer Experiments. And how did these interests dovetail with that of other colleagues leading up to the formation of the Centre for Atmospheric Sciences. RN with his colleagues played a role in the creation of the Centre and much later he was responsible for impressing upon the government the need to create a Ministry of Earth Sciences.

During our conversation on the history of sciences, it became evident that P.C. Ray’s History of Hindu Chemistry had left a deep impression and he often wondered how much more had been said on the matter since the publication of Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya’s Lokayata that had marked a milestone inasmuch as it highlighted the origins of materialist thought in India. RN may have been wary of Debiprasad’s Marxist account of the history of scientific thought in India, but he did play a role in instituting an award for Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya in recognition of his work, probably a year before the latter passed away.

I next had the chance to work with RN when he chaired INSA’s National Commission for History of Science. The Commission was till then comprised largely by scientists and historians of science. RN made it a point to bring in historians as well. One of the issues that came up for discussion over the years was the historiographical distance that had come to separate the scientist’s history of science from the professional or disciplinary history of science, which was beginning to have a deleterious effect on the discipline in India. RN took cognizance of the problem that was difficult to resolve given the conceptual momentum and sociological segmentation of disciplinary movements, but in his patient and considered way he carried the different views of the Commission.

As mentioned earlier, we had different ways of looking at questions on the history and philosophy of science. His generation of scientists, who were students in the late 1940s and 50s, was schooled in Butterfield’s and Koyre’s historiography of the 17th century Scientific Revolution and as a result were drawn to responding to the Needham question in non-European contexts. Those who entered the field in the 1980s were schooled in the idea that the big picture of the 17th century scientific revolution needed to be decentred. I read the drafts and commented on papers RN published in his attempt to answer the Indian half of the Needham question.

The essays in a book a colleague and I edited to commemorate Needham’s historiography following his demise in 1995 did not stray down the line of Needham’s question, but disputed with Needham’s ideas and how to work towards a genuinely global history of science in our own times. RN’s classic paper on Tipu’s rockets was well within this transcultural problematic. When it was first published it was framed by the idea of a neglected episode on the history of technology – of presenting a seemingly unrelated object in a new context of technological evolution. The paper when read through the lens of contemporary concerns of historians of science and technology is about the transcultural circulation of ideas and technological objects and the improvisation and redefinition they undergo in the process of circulation. There is much in the latter part of the paper, which should be material for historians of science and technology to look into. Hence its salience.

RN was deeply committed to thinking about history in the civilizational paradigm. And here too trends in disciplinary history had moved away and historians looked skeptically on the concept of civilization – both historians and scientists are well aware that concepts and theories have half-lives. Sanjay Subrahmanyam and Romila Thapar had urged scholars to rethink their civilizational histories and categories. The concept was seen by historians to embrace far too much diversity spread over vast geographical expanses and durations of time into a unitary whole. But RN’s characterization of the Indian exact sciences as premised on computational positivism will stand the test of time in perhaps marking one important phase in the history of the exact sciences in the South Asian region.

Over the last two decades I never missed the opportunity to meet him on my visits to Bangalore. Agreement during the conversations that followed was always accompanied by a charming smile and a triumphant exclamation: ‘That is correct’, as if something had been achieved. But when we failed, there was a sigh and a long drawn out ‘Wellll?’ and the conversation continued for that became an opportunity for more thinking and engagement. This attitude of constant intellectual engagement and an enviable enthusiasm of inhabiting the world of ideas made of him the exemplary academic. And that RN indeed exemplified this ideal is evident in his standing that extended beyond disciplinary boundaries. Many of us outside the world of science, or studying social and cultural aspects of science, will certainly miss his farsighted encouragement of the need for dialoguing across disciplines in an academy splintered into three cultures.

Dhruv Raina
Professor, School of Social Sciences
Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi

Prof. Narasimha (lovingly known as RN) was a towering figure in Indian and international science. I had the good fortune to be his student, and work with him closely, during my Ph.D. at the Indian Institute of Science, and later as a colleague at JNCASR. He had a deep impact on my scientific and analytic thinking over the years, in and out of academia. I still remember and carry with me a single piece of advice, written in his impeccable handwriting on the margin of the first of the ten drafts of the chapter one of my Ph.D. thesis on vortex dynamics! “Tone down the superlatives”, it said. That would be the most important, life-changing advice that I will never forget, that will forever be my guiding principle should I stray from the economy of expression and clarity of thought that so characterized RN’s spoken words and his writings.

I left academia some twenty-one years ago. During this time, during my visits to India, I made it a point to meet up with RN often. He was always welcoming, always charming. It always felt like I never left, because he would call some of his students, and begin discussion on DNS/LES or turbulence or some other topics of fluid dynamics. He brushed aside the fact that my current work in Apple has nothing to do with turbulence, and always treated me like the student I always was to him. For that, I will forever remain grateful. With RN’s passing, a giant void has been created in Indian science, which will take years to fill. Personally for me, I will miss our conversations that I had looked forward to in my visits to India.

Amit Basu
(Former Ph.D. student of Prof. Narasimha)

The article below was originally published by NAL.

The article below was originally published in the Journal of Aerospace Sciences and Technologies (vol. 73, no. 1).

Maithreyi Narasimha, daughter of Neelima and Roddam Narasimha, is a Professor of Biology at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (Mumbai).

The article below was originally published in the ICTS Newsletter (2021, Special Issue).

Any amount of wait to meet RN was worth it!

This was the feeling I had every time I waited at the door to see RN on Saturdays when he used to come to Aerospace/CAS department in IISc while he was the director at NAL. He was one of my Ph.D. guides along with Prof A. Prabhu (AP). Given my background in Electronics and not in fluid mechanics, RN would come down to my level always to explain things making me feel at ease. I was also working in a national research project (Monsoon Trough Boundary Layer Experiment - MONTBLEX) that AP was leading from IISc team with RN as advisor. I was thrilled and felt proud when RN introduced me as his young colleague (not as student) in a seminar. The multi-institutional MONTBLEX project had it major experiment during 1990 monsoon at different sites in North India. I was part of a few field engineers going from site to site attending to any instrument issues and to make sure that data were being collected properly. It was a very challenging exercise both physically and emotionally. But when I looked at the data acquired as part of quality analysis, it gave a tremendous satisfaction. After the experiment phase ended, RN, AP and I were going to a meeting in Delhi organized by the Department of Science & Technology (DST) that sponsored the project. In the car, while talking about the field experiences I mentioned that all the challenges and hardship faced during the field experiment phase were forgotten soon after looking at the data. RN immediately shook my hand and said with a big smile ‘I am glad to hear’. I cannot forget that moment ever! Another memorable moment for me was when I had an opportunity to share the stage with him in a Kannada Sangha function at Choksi hall (IISc) when RN gave a speech in Kannada. It was a pleasant surprise to all of us to see how well he had prepared and depth of his knowledge in the cultural heritage and history of Karnataka.

I moved to the US in the late 1990s on a job in the main stream Electronics and could not continue my interaction with RN in the area of atmospheric sciences/fluid dynamics. During one of my visits to India I went to see him at NIAS where he was the director. He was in the process of completing the first version of the book ‘Verses for the brave’ based on Yōga-Vāsiṣṭha. He talked about it with passion and told me one of the stories from Yōga-Vāsiṣṭha. That was about queen Choodala who gets liberated first and then helps her egoistic husband king realize the truth! He pointed out openness in the ancient thinking and unbiased view towards men and women when it comes to qualities and capabilities. It was no surprise that Yōga-Vāsiṣṭha which emphasizes on ‘self-effort’ rather than ‘fate’ had attracted an Engineer-Scientist like RN. I did not see any difference in RN’s enthusiasm and passion whether he was talking fluid mechanics or Yōga-Vāsiṣṭha. I met him a few times at his home and he was always happy to see me and welcoming even though I was not active in his areas of scientific research. I also want to remember occasions when all the RN’s students come together whenever Prof K. R. Sreenivasan (KRS) was in the town and my sincere gratitude to KRS for making those wonderful get-togethers happen.

Our prayers are with RN’s family. RN’s memory is etched in our hearts. I would like to express it in a small poem in Kannada written with initial letters from RN’s name.

ನರಜನ್ಮ ದೊಳುದಿಸಿ ಅಪ್ರತಿಮ ವಿಜ್ಞಾ ನಿಯೆನಿಸಿ
ರಸಋಷಿಯಂತೆ ಜ್ಞಾ ನದ ಹೊಳೆಯ ಹರಿಸಿ
ಸಿoಗರಿಸಿದೆ ಪೀಠವ ಎಲ್ಲ ರ ಹೃದಯದೊಳು
ಹರುಷವ ಪಸರಿಸಿದೆ ನಿೀ ನಡೆದ ದಾರಿಯೊಳು

A very rough translation goes like this:

Having born a human you became an unparalleled scientist
Like a saintly poet, a stream of knowledge flows from you
You are seated in the hearts of everyone you touched
Spreading joy all along the path you traversed.

Rudra Kumar S.
Principal Engineer, Qualcomm Technologies Inc.
New Jersey, USA

I first met Shri Roddam Narasimha, when I was a somewhat diffident Deputy Secretary at the National Security Council Secretariat, in charge of assisting the very first National Security Advisory Board ever to be set up by the Government. Seeing this constellation of some of the brightest minds in India was impressive enough; but among them Roddam Narasimha shone the brightest. That was not just due to his undoubted expertise, but because I, as someone who had to make a policy paper out of the proceedings, saw that he could explain the most complicated scientific theory in simple words, and then apply it to policy requirements. That was a rare trait, even among a group, who were each experts in their respective fields. Little surprise then, that he was constantly being called for advice by each consecutive government.

On a personal note, I was doubly impressed by his unfailing kindness and courtesy towards a hugely junior officer. His advice to me was simple. "Never be afraid of speaking your mind, when you're absolutely sure of your facts. Thats what separates those who just do a job and those who do it well." I never forgot that advice. I am grateful for having had the opportunity to serve with such a wonderful person. Sadly, people such as him are now few and far between.

Dr. Tara Kartha
Distinguished Fellow at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, New Delhi