Before his death in 1988, at 57 years old, he was the only one to have received both the Homi Bhabha Fellowship 1967–1969 [3] (he spent his time at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay, and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts doing research in Groundwater modeling) and the Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship 1975–1977,[4] two of the country's top research awards.
During the period of Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship he created the first comprehensive 20 volume hydrological atlas of Tamil Nadu State of India including mathematical models, details of hydraulic structures, among others.
This distribution is in use in electrical, civil, mechanical, and financial engineering applications.
He gave the first practical hard rock well theory[5] that won him the Gold Medal award from Indian Geohydrologists in 1974.
Kumaraswamy considered explaining the work of the Institute of Hydraulics and Hydrology (IHH),[6] Poondi to engineers and non-engineers an important duty and often had great success with it.