Rangaswamy Narasimhan

[1][2] He led the team which developed the TIFRAC, the first Indian indigenous computer[3][4] and was instrumental in the establishment of CMC Limited in 1975, a Government of India company, later bought by Tata Consultancy Services.

I would rate him as the scientific equivalent of the linguist-philosopher Dr. Noam Chomsky in this country for his work relating to language, linguistics and cognitive sciences, said M. G. K. Menon, on hearing about Narasimhan's death.

[1] In 1954, he returned to India, accepting Homi J. Bhabha's invitation to join the project team set up by the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, (TIFR) Mumbai for the development of the first indigenous computer.

[2][9] In August 1963, the Government of India set up an interdepartmental Electronics Committee under the chairmanship of Vikram Sarabhai for finding ways for self-sufficiency in the electronics industry sector[10] and Narasimhan was made the chairman of one of the sub committees, entrusted with the responsibility to look into the possibilities of finding ways to reduce dependence on IBM and International Computers Limited.

[1] He carried on his research on synthetic pattern recognition during his stint at the University of Illinois from 1961 to 1964 into TIFR and ″developed a meta theory and approach to the study of language behaviour″.

This was the topic of his book, Modeling Language Behaviour,[12] which is considered to have offered alternatives to the concepts of Noam Chomsky,[1] drawing comparisons with the American cognitive scientist.

[15] He was also associated with the publication of the book, The Dynamics of Technology: Creation and Diffusion of Skills and Knowledge as an editor[16] and edited the 1993 special issue of Current Science[17] featuring Artificial Intelligence.