Hiremagalur Krishnaswamy Kesavan, known as H. K. Kesavan (14 June 1926 – 26 November 2014), was an Indian professor in the Faculty of Engineering at the

University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario Waterloo is a city in the Canadian province of Ontario. It is one of three cities in the Regional Municipality ...

, Ontario, Canada.

Early life and education

H.K. Kesavan was born on 14 June 1926 in Bangalore, India.''IRE Transactions on Education''
Vol. 4, Issue 3, pub. Sept. 1961, p. 128 (visited 26 November 2014) He received his undergraduate degrees in science and engineering from the Central College and the Government Engineering College (now called

University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering University of Visvesvaraya College of Engineering (UVCE) was established in 1917, under the name Government Engineering College, by Bharat Ratna Sir M. Visvesvaraya. It is the fifth engineering college to be established in the country and first ...

) in

Bangalore Bangalore (), officially Bengaluru (), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan population of around , making it the third most populous city and fifth most ...

. He received his M.S. degree from the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the University ...

in 1956 and his Ph.D. from

Michigan State University Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the fi ...

in 1959, both in electrical engineering. He was an instructor at Michigan State from 1956 to 1959, and assistant professor in 1959–1960.

Career

Early career, 1960-1963

In 1960, he was appointed as associate professor at the

, eventually serving as chairman of the Electrical Engineering department. During this time, he also spent a year back at Michigan State where he finished co-authoring his first book, ''Analysis of Discrete Physical Systems'', co-authored with Herman Koenig and Yilmaz Tokad and published several years later.

IIT Kanpur, 1964-1968

For a period of five years, he returned to India to serve as the first chairman of Electrical Engineering at the

Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur The Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur) Hindi: भारतीय प्रौद्योगिकी संस्थान कानपुर) is a public institute of technology located in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India. It was ...

and concurrently as head of its nationally significant Computer Centre. He was also the first Dean of Research and Development at the IIT.See generally ''An Eye for Excellence: Fifty Innovative Years of IIT Kanpur'' by E. C. Subbarao, HarperCollins (2008). A picture of Prof. Kesavan giving a tour of the Computer Centre to Indian Prime Minister

Indira Gandhi Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi (; Given name, ''née'' Nehru; 19 November 1917 – 31 October 1984) was an Indian politician and a central figure of the Indian National Congress. She was elected as third prime minister of India in 1966 ...

on 17 September 1966 appears on p. 276.

Waterloo, 1968-1991

He returned to Waterloo to serve as the founding chairman of the Department of Systems Design engineering. He has published numerous technical papers and books on

systems theory Systems theory is the interdisciplinary study of systems, i.e. cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or human-made. Every system has causal boundaries, is influenced by its context, defined by its structu ...

, applications of linear graph theory and

entropy Entropy is a scientific concept, as well as a measurable physical property, that is most commonly associated with a state of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty. The term and the concept are used in diverse fields, from classical thermodynam ...

optimization principles.

Science and philosophy

Kesavan maintained a lifelong interest in the philosophical aspects of science. His book, ''Science and Spirituality'' presents a global view of

Vedic upright=1.2, The Vedas are ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism. Above: A page from the '' Atharvaveda''. The Vedas (, , ) are a large body of religious texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the ...

philosophy from the insights that science and spirituality provide.

External links

H.K. Kesavan remembrance
''The Globe and Mail'', 20 May 2015
Books and papers (up to 1992) by H.K. Kesavan

Memorial website (contains extended biography)

H.K. Kesavan biography
from the Spiritual Heritage Education Network

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kesavan, H. K. University of Illinois alumni Michigan State University alumni Indian academics University of Waterloo faculty Academic staff of IIT Kanpur 1926 births 2014 deaths Indian expatriates in the United States Indian expatriates in Canada