Professor R. Narasimhan: Birth Centenary
Professor R. Narasimhan: Birth Centenary
Much has been written about Professor R. Narasimhan (RN) —
computer pioneer, institution builder, and one of the sharpest minds of his
generation. Anyone looking for dates, milestones, and achievements will find
the Wikipedia article useful. His book, “Artificial Intelligence and the study
of Agentive Behaviour” contains selected papers he had published.
This piece is not about that RN!
This is about the RN I knew as a person — my mentor, my PhD
co‑guide (along with Professor J. R. Isaac), and a remarkable human being whose
influence shaped my early academic life.
Lunches, Conversations, and a Curious Mind
RN was a true gentleman, and a natural magnet for
researchers from wildly different fields. Most afternoons, you could find him
in the TIFR West Canteen, talking to computer scientists and biologists, and an
occasional psychologist, radio astronomer, or nuclear engineer at a six-seater
table. I was lucky to be part of that circle.
These were not casual lunch-table chats. RN was deeply
fascinated by cognitive psychology and brain sciences. He believed — long
before it became fashionable — that artificial intelligence must learn from animal
and human behaviour and the functioning of the brain.
Because of this, our table had biologists more often than
physicists. Many of them were studying C. elegans, the tiny
millimetre-long worm with just 302 neurons that still manages to learn and
remember. RN loved that fact. It fit perfectly with his conviction that
understanding simple biological systems could illuminate the future of AI.
My friend Ramesh Sinha from Radio Astronomy would join us
sometimes. And occasionally, M. R. Srinivasan — founder-chairman of the Nuclear
Power Corporation — would walk from his office across the street and sit with
us. He was RN’s friend.
Bananas, Cheese, and a Life of Simplicity
RN had a small ritual at the end of lunch. He would buy two
bananas and a cube of cheese from the canteen, wrap them carefully in paper
napkins, and take them home. That was his dinner.
There was something touching about that simplicity. “High
thinking, modest living” was not a slogan for him — it was his way of life.
NCST Days and Guest House Stories
Later, when many of us from the TIFR Computer Group moved
out to create the National Centre for Software Technology (NCST), RN became a
key member of our Governing Council. After retiring from TIFR, he moved to
Bangalore but continued to visit NCST and stay in our guest house.
The guest house had two rooms. On rare occasions, RN had to
share it with another Governing Council member — an eminent computer scientist I
will call Prof 2.
I lived on the same floor, so I often heard the stories.
RN had a strong dislike for house lizards. If he spotted
one, he would immediately call the building watchman to come and chase it out.
The guest house had a common bathroom, and Prof 2 once told me that RN politely
asked if he could take his shower first. “I don’t like a wet bathroom,” he
said.
These small moments captured the man perfectly — brilliant,
disciplined, gentle, and quietly particular about the things that mattered to
him.
Looking Back from Today’s AI World
When I think back to those lunches and conversations about
brains, behaviour, memory, and learning, I feel a quiet pride. RN’s focus and
judgement were decades ahead of its time.
Today’s AI revolution is based on artificial neural networks
— ideas that echo the very biological inspirations RN had urged us to pay
attention to.
Srinivasan Ramani
April 17, 2026
P.S.: I had written the first version of this article but
had asked MS Copilot if it would help in improving the long sentences and
passive sentences. Copilot did that but had the gumption to go further and offer to
create a “polished, blog‑ready, informal version of my article — warm,
readable, and faithful to my voice”. It offered to keep it “conversational,
reflective, and lightly narrative, the way a personal centenary tribute should
feel”.
I said “go ahead. Here is my article,” and gave it the text
of my article. What you see above is the version Copilot produced! Then, I
asked it to produce a painting-like image from a photograph of RN. I had that
image two minutes later! I have reproduced it above.
I wish RN were here to see the levels AI has reached!
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