Adieu Rajeev Motwani - The Page Rank Man

Rajeev Motwani, a man of spirits and inventions, is a milestone in the history of computers and Internet. The Silicon Valley is still trying to come to grips with the loss of the "Silicon Valley Giant" Rajeev Motwani. By profession Rajeev Motwani was a professor at the Stanford University. Rajeev Motwani's research focused on theoretical computer science. He is well known as the "Google Mentor". Rajeev Motwani was an early advisor and supporter of gigantic etablishments like Google and PayPal, and a special advisor to Sequoia Capital.

The Google mentor, Rajeev Motwani was born and brought up in the paradise on earth "Jammu". Later he had his B.Tech in Computer Science from the posthumous IIT Kharagpur. Adding to his list of merits was a Ph.D from U.C. Berkeley. It was then that Rajeev Motwani's flair for computers started gaining global attention.

As a child, inspired by luminaries like Gauss, Rajeev Motwani wanted to become a mathematician. Then Rajeev was allured by Algorithms, Computations, Discrete Mathematics and Databases. His vast knowledge in Computing and algorithms helped the world gain one of the foundations of Interenet - "The Page Rank". PageRank is a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page, used by the Google Internet search engine that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of "measuring" its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references.

The name "PageRank" is a trademark of Google, and the PageRank process has been patented (U.S. Patent 6,285,999). However, the patent is assigned to Stanford University and not to Google. Google has exclusive license rights on the patent from Stanford University. The university received 1.8 million shares of Google in exchange for use of the patent; the shares were sold in 2005 for $336 million. Rajeev Motwani was one of the key brains among the network of brains who came up with Page Rank Algorithm.

But alas, the person whose brains power the Google Search is no more. Rajeev Motwani was found dead in his pool in the backyard in his Atherton home on June 5, 2009, after apparently falling in, but the cause of death is not certain. He could not swim, but was planning on taking lessons, according to his friends. Still Rajeev Motwani's contributions to the world will be remembered forever. With his algorithms and developments Rajeev Motwani has made a mark in the Computing World. So lets all feel grateful to this pious man whose brain powers the Google Search and wish that his soul rests in peace.