N. R. Narayana Murthy

Nagavara Ramarao Narayana Murthy better known as N. R. Narayana Murthy, is an Indian businessman and a software engineer. He is the founder and currently the non-executive Chairman and Chief Mentor of Infosys Technologies Limited.

Murthy currently serves as an independent director on the boards of DBS Bank, HSBC and Unilever. He also serves on the boards of the Ford Foundation, UN Foundation, Indo-British Partnership, and NDTV.

He is a present member of the Advisory Boards and Councils of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the Corporate Governance initiative at the Harvard Business School, Indian School of Business, Cornell Universitycommittee on academic affairs and committee on alumni affairs and development, Yale University and the University of Tokyo’s President's Council. He is a member of the Board of Directors of INSEAD, Board of Overseers of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Singapore Management University, Board of Trustees and the Board of Advisors for the William F. Achtmeyer Center for Global Leadership at the Tuck School of Business, Asian Institute of Management (AIM), Board of Members of School of Management at Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Asia Business Council and Business Advisory Council of Great Lakes Institute of Management and International Institute of Information Technology - Bangalore.

He also serves as a director of the Central Board of the Reserve Bank of India and as Co-Chairman of the Plc. He is a member of the Prime Minister of India's council on trade and industry and is a member of the Asia Advisory Board of the British Telecommunications.

In August 2004, TIME magazine’s listed him under “Global Tech Influentials” as one of the ten leaders who are helping shape the future of technology. In November 2006, TIME magazine again voted him as one of the Asian heroes who have brought about revolutionary changes in Asia in the last 60 years.

Early life

Born into a Kannada Madhwa Brahmin family in Mysore, India on August 20, 1946, in Sidlaghatta near Muddenahalli (Birth place of Sir M Vishveshwarya). Murthy graduated with a degree in electrical engineering from the National Institute of Engineering, University of Mysore in 1967 after attending government school, and received his master's degree from IIT Kanpur in 1969.

His first position was at IIM Ahmedabad as chief systems programmer ^[3] where he worked on a time-sharing system and designed and implemented a BASICinterpreter for ECIL (Electronics Corporation of India Limited).

After IIM Ahmedabad, he then joined Patni Computer Systems in Pune. Before moving to Mumbai, Murthy met his wife Sudha Murthy in Pune who at the time was an engineer working at Tata Engineering and Locomotive Co. Ltd. (Telco, now known as Tata Motors) in Pune. In 1981, with an investment of Rs.10,000 ($250 at the time) from his wife, he founded Infosys with six other software professionals. He served as the president of the National Association of Software and Service Companies, India from 1992 to 1994. Mr. Murthy is the brother-in-law of serial entrepreneur Gururaj "Desh" Deshpande^[4] and the uncle of former NASSCOMChairman and MphasiS chief Jerry Rao.

Professional career

Murthy founded Infosys in 1981 in Pune with an initial capital of US $250, most of which was borrowed from his wife Sudha Murty. At its inception, he invited six other engineers to join the company. Murthy served as the founder CEO of Infosys for 21 years, and was succeeded by co-founder Nandan Nilekani in March 2002. At Infosys he articulated, designed and implemented the Global Delivery Model which has become the foundation for the huge success in IT services outsourcing from India. He also lead the company through several key decisions including its listing on the Indian stock exchange and the listing on NASDAQ,.

Murthy retired from his executive position at Infosys on 20 August 2006. However, he continues as the Non-Executive Chairman of the board.^[5]

Murthy started a new venture capital fund called Catamaran Venture Fund with the money he got by selling 800,000 Infosys shares worth 174 Crores. Sudha Murthy does it again by helping him in setting up his VC Fund by giving him Rs.430 crores which she got by selling quarter of her stake 1.6% in Infosys.

Personal life

His wife, Sudha Murthy née Kulkarni, is an Indian social worker and accomplished author. She is known for her philanthropic work through the Infosys Foundation. Her sister, Jayashree Despande is wife of enterpreneur and founder of US-based Sycamore Networks, Gururaj Deshpande.

They have two children - Rohan and Akshata. Rohan is engaged to Venu Srinivasan's (of TVS motors) daughter Lakshmi Venu. Akshata Murthy is married to Rishi Sunak.

Awards and honours

Year	Name	Awarding organization	Ref.
2010	IEEE Honorary Membership	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.	[6]
2010	Foreign Associate Member	United States National Academy of Engineering.	[7]
2008	Padma Vibhushan	President of India.
2008	Officer of the Legion of Honor	Government of France.	[8]
2007	Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE)	Government of United Kingdom.	[9]
2007	IEEE Ernst Weber Engineering Leadership Recognition	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.	[10]
2003	Asia's Businessmen of the Year	Fortune magazine.
2003	Indo-French Forum Medal	Indo-French Forum.
2003	World Entrepreneur of the Year	Ernst and Young.
2001	Wharton Business School Dean's Medal	University of Pennsylvania.
2001	Max Schmidheiny Liberty Prize	Switzerland.
2001	Nikkei Asia Prize	Nikkei Inc.
2000	Padma Shri	President of India.
1998	Distinguished Alumnus Award	Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur.
1996	JRD Corporate Leadership Award	All India Management Association (AIMA).

• 2006: In May 2006, Narayana Murthy has, for the fifth year running, emerged the most admired business leader of India in a study conducted by Brand-comm, a leading Brand Consulting, Advertising and PR firm
• 2005: In December 2005, Narayana Murthy was voted as the 7th most admired CEO/Chairman in the world in a global study conducted by Burson-Marsteller with the Economist Intelligence Unit [1]. The Economist ranked him 8th among the top 15 most admired global leaders (2005). He was ranked 28th among the world's most-respected business leaders by the Financial Times (2005). He topped the Economic Times Corporate Dossier list of India's most powerful CEOs for two consecutive years – 2004 and 2005.
• 2001: He was named by TIME / CNN as one of the twenty-five, most influential global executives, a group selected for their lasting influence in creating new industries and reshaping markets.
• 1999: BusinessWeek named him one of the nine entrepreneurs of the year and he was also featured in the BusinessWeek's 'The Stars of Asia' (for three successive years - 1998, 1999 and 2000).

Dayanand Saraswati

Maharishi Dayanand Saraswati (February 12, 1824 – October 30, 1883 in Ajmer) was an important Hindu religious scholar, reformer and the founder, in 1875, of theArya Samaj, a Hindu reform movement. He was the first to give the call for Swarajya–"India for Indians"–in 1876, later taken up by Lokmanya Tilak. Denouncing the idolatry and ritualistic worship which was prevalent in Hinduism at the time, he worked towards reviving Vedic ideologies. Subsequently the philosopher and President of India, S. Radhakrishnan, called him one of "makers of Modern India" as did Sri Aurobindo.

One of his notable disciples was Shyamji Krishna Varma who founded India House in London and guided other revolutionaries. Others who were influenced by and followed him included Madam Cama, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar,Lala Hardyal, Madan Lal Dhingra, Bhagat Singh, Swami Shraddhanand, and Lala Lajpat Rai. One of his most influential works is the book Satyarth Prakash, which contributed to the Indian independence movement. He was a sanyasi (ascetic) from boyhood, and a scholar, who believed in the infallible authority of the Vedas.

Dayananda advocated the doctrine of karma, and skepticism in dogma, and emphasized the ideals of brahmacharya(celibacy and devotion to God). The Theosophical Society and the Arya Samaj were united from 1878 to 1882, becoming the Theosophical Society of the Arya Samaj.

Among Maharishi Dayananda's contributions are his promoting of the equal rights of women–such as the right to education and reading of Indian scriptures–and his translation of the Vedas from Sanskrit to Hindi so that the common person might be able to read the Vedas.

Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman

Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, (7 November 1888 – 21 November 1970) was an Indian physicist whose work was influential in the growth of science in the world. He was the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930 for the discovery that when light traverses a transparent material, some of the light that is deflected changes in wavelength. This phenomenon is now called Raman scattering and is the result of the Raman effect.

Raman was honoured with a large number of honorary doctorates and memberships of scientific societies. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society early in his career (1924) and knighted in 1929. In 1930 he won the Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1941 he was awarded the Franklin Medal. In 1954 he was awarded the Bharat Ratna. He was also awarded the Lenin Peace Prize in 1957.

India celebrates National Science Day on 28 February of every year to commemorate the discovery of the Raman effect in 1928.

Bhaskara

Bhaskara  (1114–1185), also known as Bhaskara II and Bhaskara Achārya ("Bhaskara the teacher"), was an Indian mathematician and an astronomer. He was born near Bijjada Bida which is in present day Bijapur district, Karnataka, India. Bhaskara was the head of an astronomical observatory at Ujjain, the leading mathematical center of ancient India. His predecessors in this post had included both the noted Indian mathematicians Brahmagupta and Varahamihira. He lived in the Sahyadri region.

Bhaskara and his works represent a significant contribution to mathematical and astronomical knowledge in the 12th century. He has been called the greatest mathematician of medieval India. His main work was the Siddhanta Siromani, Sanskrit for "Crown of treatises," is divided into four parts called Lilavati ,Bijaganita, Grahaganita and Goladhyaya. These four sections deal with arithmetic, algebra, mathematics of the planets, and spheres respectively.

Bhaskara's work on calculus predates Newton and Leibniz by half a millennium. He is particularly known in the discovery of the principles of differential calculus and its application to astronomical problems and computations. While Newton and Leibniz have been credited with differential and integral calculus, there is strong evidence to suggest that Bhaskara was a pioneer in some of the principles of differential calculus. He was perhaps the first to conceive the differential coefficient and differential calculus.

Ashoka

Ashoka (Devanāgarī: अशोक, IAST: Aśoka, ca. 304–232 BC), popularly known as Ashoka the Great, was an Indian emperor of the Maurya Dynasty who ruled almost all of the Indian subcontinent from ca. 269 BC to 232 BC. One of India's greatest emperors, Ashoka reigned over most of present-day India after a number of military conquests. His empire stretched from present-day Pakistan, and Afghanistan in the west, to the present-day Bangladesh and the Indian state of Assam in the east, and as far south as northern Kerala and Andhra. He conquered the kingdom named Kalinga, which no one in his dynasty had conquered starting from Chandragupta Maurya. His reign was headquartered in Magadha (present-day Bihar, India). He embraced Buddhism from the prevalent Jainism tradition after witnessing the mass deaths of the war of Kalinga, which he himself had waged out of a desire for conquest. He was later dedicated to the propagation of Buddhism across Asia and established monuments marking several significant sites in the life of Gautama Buddha. Ashoka was a devotee of ahimsa(nonviolence), love, truth, tolerance and vegetarianism. Ashoka is remembered in history as a philanthropic administrator. In the history of India Ashoka is referred to as Samraat Chakravartin Ashoka - the Emperor of Emperors Ashoka.

His name "aśoka" means "painless, without sorrow" in Sanskrit (the a privativum and śoka "pain, distress"). In hisedicts, he is referred to as Devānāmpriya (Pali Devānaṃpiya or "The Beloved Of The Gods"), and Priyadarśin (PaliPiyadasī or "He who regards everyone with affection").

Along with the Edicts of Ashoka, his legend is related in the later 2nd century Aśokāvadāna ("Narrative of Asoka") and Divyāvadāna ("Divine narrative"), and in the Sri Lankan text Mahavamsa ("Great Chronicle").

Ashoka played a critical role in helping make Buddhism a world religion. As the peace-loving ruler of one of the world's largest, richest and most powerful multi-ethnic states, he is considered an exemplary ruler, who tried to put into practice a secular state ethic of non-violence. The emblem of the modern Republic of India is an adaptation of the Lion Capital of Ashoka.

Aryabhata

Aryabhata (476–550 CE) was the first in the line of great mathematician-astronomers from the classical age of Indian mathematics and Indian astronomy. His most famous works are the Āryabhaṭīya (499 CE, when he was 23 years old) and the Arya-siddhanta.

Aryabhata's work was of great influence in the Indian astronomical tradition and influenced several neighbouring cultures through translations. The Arabic translation during the Islamic Golden Age (c. 820 CE), was particularly influential. Some of his results are cited by Al-Khwarizmi and in the 10th century Al-Biruni stated that Aryabhata's followers believed that the Earth rotated on its axis.
His definitions of sine (jya), cosine (kojya), versine (utkrama-jya), and inverse sine (otkram jya) influenced the birth of trigonometry. He was also the first to specify sine and versine (1 − cos x) tables, in 3.75° intervals from 0° to 90°, to an accuracy of 4 decimal places.
In fact, modern names "sine" and "cosine" are mistranscriptions of the words jya and kojya as introduced by Aryabhata. As mentioned, they were translated as jiba and kojiba in Arabic and then misunderstood by Gerard of Cremona while translating an Arabic geometry text to Latin. He assumed that jiba was the Arabic word jaib, which means "fold in a garment", L. sinus (c. 1150).
Aryabhata's astronomical calculation methods were also very influential. Along with the trigonometric tables, they came to be widely used in the Islamic world and used to compute many Arabic astronomical tables (zijes). In particular, the astronomical tables in the work of the Arabic Spain scientist Al-Zarqali (11th century) were translated into Latin as the Tables of Toledo (12th c.) and remained the most accurate ephemeris used in Europe for centuries.