Rajeev Motwani (

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

: राजीव मोटवानी , 24 March 1962 – 5 June 2009) was an Indian-American professor of computer science at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

whose research focused on

theoretical computer science Theoretical computer science is a subfield of computer science and mathematics that focuses on the Abstraction, abstract and mathematical foundations of computation. It is difficult to circumscribe the theoretical areas precisely. The Associati ...

. He was a special advisor to

Sequoia Capital Sequoia Capital Operations, LLC is an American venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California, specializing in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. the firm had appro ...

. He was a winner of the

Gödel Prize The Gödel Prize is an annual prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science, given jointly by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and the Association for Computing Machinery Special Inter ...

in 2001.

Early life and education

Rajeev Motwani was born in

Jammu Jammu () is a city in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir (union territory), Jammu and Kashmir in the disputed Kashmir region.The application of the term "administered" to the various regions of Kashmir and a mention of the Kashmir dispute ...

, Jammu and Kashmir,

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

, on 24 March 1962, and grew up in

New Delhi New Delhi (; ) is the Capital city, capital of India and a part of the Delhi, National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the Government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Parliament ...

. His father was in the

Indian Army The Indian Army (IA) (ISO 15919, ISO: ) is the Land warfare, land-based branch and largest component of the Indian Armed Forces. The President of India is the Commander-in-Chief, Supreme Commander of the Indian Army, and its professional head ...

. He had two brothers. As a child, inspired by luminaries like

Gauss Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (; ; ; 30 April 177723 February 1855) was a German mathematician, astronomer, Geodesy, geodesist, and physicist, who contributed to many fields in mathematics and science. He was director of the Göttingen Observat ...

, he wanted to become a

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

. Motwani went to St Columba's School, New Delhi. He completed his B.Tech. in

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

from the

Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur The Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT- Kanpur or IIT-K) is a public institute of technology located in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India. As an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), it was declared an Institute of National Importance by ...

Kanpur Kanpur (Hindustani language, Hindustani: ), originally named Kanhapur and formerly anglicized as Cawnpore, is the second largest city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Uttar Pradesh after Lucknow. It was the primary ...

Uttar Pradesh Uttar Pradesh ( ; UP) is a States and union territories of India, state in North India, northern India. With over 241 million inhabitants, it is the List of states and union territories of India by population, most populated state in In ...

in 1983 and got his Ph.D. in computer science from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

in Berkeley,

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

in 1988, under the supervision of Richard M. Karp.

Career

Motwani joined Stanford soon after U.C. Berkeley. He founded the Mining Data at Stanford project (MIDAS), an umbrella organization for several groups looking into new and innovative data management concepts. His research included

data privacy Information privacy is the relationship between the collection and dissemination of data, technology, the public expectation of privacy, contextual information norms, and the legal and political issues surrounding them. It is also known as data ...

web search A search engine is a software system that provides hyperlinks to web pages, and other relevant information on the Web in response to a user's query. The user enters a query in a web browser or a mobile app, and the search results are typically ...

robotics Robotics is the interdisciplinary study and practice of the design, construction, operation, and use of robots. Within mechanical engineering, robotics is the design and construction of the physical structures of robots, while in computer s ...

, and computational drug design. He is also one of the originators of the Locality-sensitive hashing algorithm. Motwani was one of the co-authors (with

Larry Page Lawrence Edward Page (born March 26, 1973) is an American businessman, computer engineer and computer scientist best known for co-founding Google with Sergey Brin. Page was chief executive officer of Google from 1997 until August 2001 when ...

and

Sergey Brin Sergey Mikhailovich Brin (; born August 21, 1973) is an American computer scientist and businessman who co-founded Google with Larry Page. He was the president of Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc., until stepping down from the role on D ...

, and Terry Winograd) of an influential early paper on the

PageRank PageRank (PR) is an algorithm used by Google Search to rank web pages in their search engine results. It is named after both the term "web page" and co-founder Larry Page. PageRank is a way of measuring the importance of website pages. Accordin ...

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of Rigour#Mathematics, mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algo ...

. He also co-authored another seminal search paper ''What Can You Do With A Web In Your Pocket'' with those same authors. PageRank was the basis for search techniques of Google (founded by Page and Brin), and Motwani advised or taught many of Google's developers and researchers, including the first employee, Craig Silverstein. He was an author of two widely used theoretical computer science textbooks: ''Randomized Algorithms'' with Prabhakar Raghavan and '' Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation'' with John Hopcroft and

Jeffrey Ullman Jeffrey David Ullman (born November 22, 1942) is an American computer scientist and the Stanford W. Ascherman Professor of Engineering, Emeritus, at Stanford University. His textbooks on compilers (various editions are popularly known as the dr ...

. He was an avid

angel investor An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an individual who provides capital to a business or businesses, including startups, usually in exchange for convertible de ...

and helped fund a number of startups to emerge from Stanford. He sat on boards including Google, Kaboodle, Mimosa Systems (acquired by

Iron Mountain Incorporated Iron Mountain Inc. is an American enterprise information management services company founded in 1951 and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. Its records management, information destruction, and data backup and recovery services are supplied t ...

), Adchemy, Baynote, Vuclip, NeoPath Networks (acquired by

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc. (using the trademark Cisco) is an American multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, m ...

in 2007),

Tapulous Tapulous, Inc. was an American Computer software, software and video game Video game developer, developer and Video game publisher, publisher headquartered in Palo Alto, California. It was a wholly owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company as pa ...

and Stanford Student Enterprises. He was active in the Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students (BASES). He was a winner of the

in 2001 for his work on the

PCP theorem In computational complexity theory, the PCP theorem (also known as the PCP characterization theorem) states that every decision problem in the NP complexity class has probabilistically checkable proofs ( proofs that can be checked by a randomiz ...

and its applications to hardness of approximation.

Death

Motwani was found dead in his pool in the backyard of his Atherton,

San Mateo County San Mateo County ( ), officially the County of San Mateo, is a county (United States), county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 764,442. Redwood City, California, Redwood City is th ...

home on 5 June 2009. The

coroner, Robert Foucrault, ruled the death an accidental drowning. Toxicology tests showed that Motwani's

blood alcohol content Blood alcohol content (BAC), also called blood alcohol concentration or blood alcohol level, is a measurement of alcohol intoxication used for legal or medical purposes. BAC is expressed as mass of alcohol per volume of blood. In US and many i ...

was 0.26 percent. He could not swim, but was planning on taking lessons, according to his friends.

Personal life

Motwani, and his wife Asha Jadeja Motwani, had two daughters named Naitri and Anya.Google mentor Rajeev Motwani dies in freak accident
2009-06-07 After his death, his family donated US$1.5 million in 2011 and a building was named in his honor at IIT Kanpur.

Awards

in 2001 * Okawa Foundation Research Award * Arthur Sloan Research Fellowship * National Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation * Distinguished Alumnus Award from IIT Kanpur in 2006 * Bergmann Memorial Award from the US-Israel Bi-National Science Foundation * IBM Faculty Award

References

External links

Mathematician at heart

at

The Telegraph ''The Telegraph'', ''Daily Telegraph'', ''Sunday Telegraph'' and other variant names are often names for newspapers. Newspapers with these titles include: Australia * The Telegraph (Adelaide), ''The Telegraph'' (Adelaide), a newspaper in Adelaid ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Motwani, Rajeev Indian emigrants to the United States Stanford University School of Engineering faculty Indian theoretical computer scientists American computer scientists Gödel Prize laureates IIT Kanpur alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni Google people 1962 births 2009 deaths St. Columba's School, Delhi alumni Scientists from Jammu and Kashmir People from Jammu (city) 20th-century Indian mathematicians People from Atherton, California Accidental deaths in California Deaths by drowning in California