BENGALURU: Eminent aerospace scientist and fluid dynamicist Prof Roddam Narasimha passed away on Monday night. He was admitted to MS Ramaiah Hospital last Sunday after he suffered a brain haemorrhage.Former director of the National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL), Prof Narasimha, was awarded the Padma Vibhushan -- the country’s second-highest civilian award, in 2013.
In the mid-1980s, as a member of then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s Scientific Advisory Council, Prof Narasimha was instrumental in establishing a major parallel computing initiative in the country. Under his leadership as director of NAL, Wipro designed and developed the Flowsolver Mark 1 hardware for parallel computing -- the process of breaking down larger problems into smaller, independent, and often similar parts, which are executed simultaneously using multiple processors communicating via shared memory. This was done with NAL funds under Prof Narasimha’s initiative.
He was also the President of the Indian Academy of Sciences from 1992 to 1994, spearheading a new programme on university education in science which led to launching of the science journal, Resonance.
He was the longest-serving member of India’s Space Commission, from which he resigned in February 2012 in protest against the black-listing of three top ISRO scientists, including former ISRO chairman Madhavan G Nair, in the controversial Devas deal in 2005.
He co-chaired the joint steering committee and the Joint Scientific Working Group for the Indo-French atmospheric research satellite Megha-Tropiques, a mission studying the water cycle in the tropical atmosphere in the context of climate change, launched in October 2011.Prof Narasimha was the DST Year-of-Science Chair Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) and concurrently held the Pratt & Whitney Chair in Science and Engineering at the University of Hyderabad.