V. Rajaraman: The teacher who built India's computing mind, no more

When a teacher departs, the blackboards weep. A generation of learners, spread across the world, pause and go back in time, overwhelmed by a quiet sense of gratitude and loss. Such is life, and such is India’s timeless Guru-Shishya parampara, where many jambavans silently walk the corridors of knowledge, leaving behind an imprint that endures long after they are gone.

- By Shrikanth G

Professor Vaidyeswaran Rajaraman was one of them.

He passed away on 8 November 2025 in Bengaluru, aged 92. For India’s technology community, it feels as if a quiet light has gone out. In 1997, Dataquest had the honour of presenting him the Lifetime Achievement Award. It was one of those rare moments when the industry paused to recognise a teacher. Prof Rajaraman accepted it with the calm dignity that defined him, reminding everyone that progress begins not in boardrooms, but in classrooms.

A LIFE WELL LIVED

Born on 8 September 1933 to Ramaswami Vaidyeswaran and Sarada in Erode, then part of the Madras Presidency, Prof Rajaraman’s early years reflected the curiosity of a mind destined for discovery. He passed the Higher Secondary Certificate examination in 1949 as part of the first batch of Madras Education Association (now DTEA) Higher Secondary School, New Delhi.

He went on to earn a BSc (Honours) in Physics from St Stephen's College, University of Delhi, in 1952, followed by a Diploma in Electrical Communication Engineering from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore in 1955. He stayed on at IISc to design and construct nonlinear units for an analogue computer, applying them to engineering problems. That work earned him an Associateship from IISc in 1957.

Awarded an overseas scholarship by the Government of India, he joined the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and obtained his MSc in Electrical Engineering in 1959. He then pursued doctoral research on adaptive control systems at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, completing his PhD in 1961. His early academic career began there as an Assistant Professor of Statistics, before he returned to India in 1962 to join the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur) as an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering.