Monday, February 16, 2009

An AutoBiography -ABDUL KALAM



Teacher puts the students ahead :

Now I would like to discuss about my mathematics teacher Prof Thothatri Iyengar. As a young science student, I had an opportunity at St. Joseph's College to witness a unique scene of divine looking personality walking through the college campus every morning, and teaching Mathematics to various degree courses. Students looked at the personality who was a symbol of our own culture, with awe and respect. When he walked, knowledge radiated all around. The great personality was, Prof Thothatri Iyengar, our teacher. At that time, 'Calculus Srinivasan who was my mathematics teacher, used to talk about Prof Thothatri Iyengar with deep respect. They had an understanding to have an integrated class by Thothatri Iyengar for first year B.Sc. (Hons) and first year B.Sc. (Physics). Thus, I had the opportunity to attend his classes, particularly on modern algebra, statistics and complex variables. When we were in the B.Sc first year, Calculus Srinivasan used to select top ten students to the Mathematics Club of St. Joseph's, whom were addressed by Prof Thothatri Iyengar. I still remember, in 1952, he gave a masterly lecture on ancient mathematicians and astronomers of India. In that lecture, he introduced four great mathematicians and astronomers of India, which is still ringing in my ears. They are Aryabhata, Srinivasa Ramanujan, Brahmagupta, Bhaskaracharya. Let me discuss one.


Prof. Thothatri Iyengar explained, based on his analysis, that Aryabhata was both an astronomer and mathematician, born in 476 AD in Kusuma-pura (now called Patna). He was known to represent a summary of all Maths at that point of time. Just when he was only 23 years old, he wrote his book ARYABHATIYAM in two parts. He covered important areas like arithmetic, algebra (first ever contributor), trigonometry and of course, astronomy. He gave formulae for the areas of a triangle and a circle and attempted to give the volumes of a sphere and a pyramid. He was the first to give value of pie. He discovered that the earth takes about 365 days to orbit around the sun. Prof. Thothatri Iyengar always puts the student to take a pride in India's contribution in astronomy and mathematics and puts the students ahead. This great teacher combined his knowledge of science with his deep insight into many aspects of our civilizational heritage. Prof. Thothatri Iyengar was an example for continuously building capacities among students and putting the students well ahead in mathematical sciences. He also injected great thoughts in the minds of students and promoted nobility in thinking and action. Now I would like to discuss about the teacher who built the capacity of working together and evolution of integrated system design even during engineering student life.


Learning integrated system design:

While I was studying aeronautical engineering in MIT, Chennai, (1954-57) during the third year of my course, I was assigned a project to design a low-level attack aircraft together with six other colleagues. I was given the responsibility of system design and system integration by integrating the team members. Also, I was responsible for aerodynamic and structural design of the project. The other five of my team took up the design of propulsion, control, guidance, avionics and instrumentation of the aircraft. My design teacher Prof. Srinivasan, the then Director of MIT, was our guide. He reviewed the project and declared my work to be gloomy and disappointing. He didn't lend an ear to my difficulties in bringing together data base from multiple designers. I asked for a month's time to complete the task, since I had to get the inputs from five of my colleagues without which I cannot complete the system design. Prof. Srinivasan told me "Look, young man, today is Friday afternoon. I give you three days time. If by Monday morning I don't get the configuration design, your scholarship will be stopped." I had a jolt in my life, as scholarship was my lifeline, without which I cannot continue with my studies. There was no other way out but to finish the task. My team felt the need for working together round the clock. We didn't sleep that night, working on the drawing board skipping our dinner. On Saturday, I took just an hour's break. On Sunday morning, I was near completion, when I felt someone's presence in my laboratory. It was Prof. Srinivasan studying my progress. After looking at my work, he patted and hugged me affectionately. He had words of appreciation: "I knew I was putting you under stress and asking you to meet a difficult deadline. You have done great job in system design".


Through this review mechanism Prof Srinivasan, really injected the necessity of understanding the value of time by each team member and brought out the best from the system design team. I realized that if something is at stake, the human minds get ignited and the working capacity gets enhanced manifold. That's what exactly happened. This is one of the techniques of building talent. The message is that young in the organization, whatever be their specialization, be trained to systems approach and projects, which will prepare them for new products, innovation and undertaking higher organizational responsibilities. Teacher has to be a coach like Prof. Srinivasan.


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ആശ വി. പി

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