May 2023

Mandayam Iyengars are a highly progressive community, and the MSS is representative of this trait. The first Mandayam Ladies Conference was held in Mandya as early as 1935, April 20th.

And here is the picture shared by Smt. Rama Nidhi. Kudos to all those who made the conference possible and thanks to all those who preserved and shared the picture. We welcome any further information about the conference – agenda, minutes, participants or anything that could be published .

24th February 2023 was a special day for the Mandayam community when the statue of Late Dr. MOP Iyengar – a doyen in the field of Algology was unveiled at MARS (Marine Algal Research Station) at Mandapam, a small township near Rameswaram. He was a pioneer scientist who contributed enormously to Phycology, discovering new species, both microscopic and macroscopic, thus he was rightly called as the”Father of Indian Phycology ”

Professor Dr. M O P Iyengar served a major part of his life teaching at the Presidency College, Madras, and the last dozen years as Professor at the new established University Research Laboratory also at Madras (now Chennai). After retirement he was provided with facilities to work at home and he did so till the end. Dr. Iyengar aimed to obtain a comprehensive knowledge of India’s algal wealth, its diversity and ecology. During his time, algae were sent to Dr. Iyengar for studying. Characiosiphon Iyengar is a hollow club-shaped alga, a coenocytic cell, first collected and sent to Prof. Iyengar by a preacher–teacher. An active teacher all his life, Iyengar had acquired a reputation for the credibility for his observations and it was hazardous to contradict him. No wonder, because he patiently studied rare algae with their peculiar and important characteristics before publishing. This endless studying had other fallouts and he left behind a great deal of unpublished observations and drawings of very many new and rare algae. Volvocales, with which he began his algae studies, covered about thousand printed pages in his posthumous publications.

References:
T V Desikachary 1968 Mandyam Osuri Parthasarathy Iyengar (1886–1963); Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Indian National Science Academy, No. 7, pp 12–21

Thanks to Dr.Rohini and Sri.A.N.Parthasarathy for all the material sent on WhatsApp groups

In the late 1990s, M. T. Raghunath was part of a cross-disciplinary team, that included researchers from several countries, at IBM Research, that attempted to fit a programmable computer into a wristwatch form-factor. The team successfully demonstrated a wristwatch that ran both Linux and X11, which at that time, were seen as software that primarily ran on servers.

This work was recognized with a Test of Time Award from Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on Mobile computing (SIGMOBILE) for “a wide set of contributions that are found in many of today’s personal devices, including innovations such as a 740dpi OLED screen, being the most miniaturized Linux device at the time, now-standard power-saving techniques in hardware and software, and interaction advances for bezel and touch UX”.

Test of Time Award is given to contributions that demonstrate a lasting impact in the field, which can be assessed only after considerable time. The award was decided in 2021 for work done much ahead of its time, in 1998-2002, with the paper being published in 2002. An IEEE or ACM paper is recognition by one’s peers, a feather in the cap among the best computer scientists in the world. To be chosen as a lasting contribution among that exclusive set, is an even greater honour. The award was declared in 2022, but was actually given out in early 2023.