Archive for the 'People' Category

Aaron, the passionate liberator

Lawrence Lessig and Aaron Swartz

Lawrence Lessig and Aaron Swartz in 2002 (Courtesy Wikipedia)

The intellectual hoarders around the world would have heaved a sigh of relief when they heard about the tragic death of Aaron Swartz. The Hindu rightly pointed out that the world had become poorer with the death of this computing genius and passionate activist who stood for free access to knowledge and information in the Internet. He worked hard to free information vaulted behind pay walls. In that effort, the young adventurer in him coupled with his programing prowess succeeded to download 4.8 million articles from the digital library of JSTOR and distributed freely in the Internet. Continue reading ‘Aaron, the passionate liberator’

KSSN: A Venerable Silent Mathematician

A funny incident happened when Prof KSS Nambooripad (KSSN) started his career as a faculty member in the math department of UC College, Alwaye in central Kerala. One of the students stood up and asked, why should they learn mathematics as he could not find any compelling reasons to learn it. Continue reading ‘KSSN: A Venerable Silent Mathematician’