Prof. Subhash Kak
Award Year: 2002 | Degree Year: 1970
Prof. Subhash Kak was born on March 26, 1947, in Srinagar. After studying in schools in Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh, he attended Jammu & Kashmir University where he obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering in 1967. Thereupon, he joined IIT Delhi and completed his Ph.D. in 1970.
For most of the 1970s, he taught at IIT Delhi, with short stints at Imperial College, Bell Labs, and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. He moved to Louisiana State University as a Professor in 1979.
His Ph.D. dissertation was on information theory and communications engineering, areas in which he continues to work. He has worked on cryptography, random sequences, coding, artificial intelligence, and neural networks. He is a pioneer in investigating information-theoretic aspects of quantum mechanics. He has also worked on models of the brain from the viewpoint of pattern processing. He has authored over 200 journal papers, numerous essays, and fifteen books. His scientific contributions include one of the earliest patents on speech scrambling and a patent on instantaneously trained neural networks. The latter invention has found applications in time-series prediction and in the design of meta-search engines.
Over the years, he has also become interested in the history of science, especially as it relates to India. He discovered a long lost code in astronomy from early times in India. This has significant implications for our understanding of the rise of astronomy in India. He has also investigated early research in mathematics and linguistics. These studies are documented by him in journals and conference papers and in the following six books, “The Nature of Physical Reality”, “The Astronomical Code of the Rigveda”, “In Search of the Cradle of Civilization”, “The Wishing Tree”, “The Ashvamedha” and “The Gods Within”. In fact, his interests extend beyond engineering and history of science. He has published four books of poetry in Hindi and English, and he is well-known for his literary essays.
His awards include Science Academy Medal of the Indian National Science Academy, Halliburton Award, UNDP Tokten Award, and Goyal Prize. He was also a National Fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla during 2000-2001.
In honoring Prof. Subhash Kak, we recognize the outstanding contributions made by him as a scientist, technologist, and a historian. Through his achievements, Prof. Kak has brought glory to the name of this Institute.
