Aug 04, 2006 :: A measure of India’s knowledge potential
R Arvind, a final year student of engineering from the unfashionable Chennai suburb of Pammal and studying at an obscure college even further away in Tambaram has been given a $121,597 fellowship to pursue his PhD in the US. He had always been interested in missile systems. His project at the college was on minimising errors in missile navigation. An Internet search led him to discover that Prof Jay A Farrell at the University of California was working on the subject. The professor looked at Arvind’s work and offered him the opportunity.
The modest circumstances of the young man did not matter once he rode the Internet highway. The story is both a measure of India’s knowledge potential and an indicator of how true genius is less likely any more, to die unnoticed.