M. R. Joshi, former director of Research & Development Establishment (Engineers), a DRDO institution, passed away recently.
Joshi, a distinguished scientist and a brilliant innovator, was a civil engineer by training. He was an expert in military bridging. His work included MLAB, the manually launched assault bridge and Sarvatra, a multi-span bridging system. The idea in these unique systems was to help Indian soldiers make rapid advances in difficult terrains with lightweight bridging equipment.
Joshi was relentless in his pursuit of applying information technology to engineering, administration and knowledge management.His establishment was the first to have a local area network in the city of Pune. He worked towards a paperless office, and pursued several ways to foster knowledge sharing and collaboration amongst project teams using computer systems.
It is in these areas that Harbinger in its early days became a trusted software provider and partner of DRDO. For an engagement spanning several years in the early '90s, Harbinger continued innovating software applications with inspiration from Mr Joshi.
Recipient of many awards, Mr Joshi was a remarkable person to know. At the time we worked with him, he was about two times my age, and yet always managed to make the difference disappear. The Establishment would organize classical music concerts, and he would personally send a signed invitation every time. Harbinger was a 10-people company back then, and this vendor treatment was indeed very special, as you can imagine.
Joshi had a deep regard for the military genius of Leonardo Da Vinci, combined with the great master's legendary art. His home was decorated with his favorite Leonardo paintings. His loyal dog was named Ermine. When he commissioned a beautiful new auditorium on the R&DE campus, he named it Leonardo da Vinci Auditorium. It took him a few trips to Delhi to convince the bureaucrats and politicians that this was a good idea.
Mr APJ Abdul Kalam, who later became the President of India, was his immediate boss, and paid him glowing tributes for his work.
Dr S Guruprasad, a young and promising scientist who worked in his team, later went on the become the establishment's director. In a fitting coincidence, he felicitated Joshi on the occasion of the establishment's golden jubilee.
Team Harbinger cannot stop counting its good fortunes - this great man was certainly one of them. We will miss you, M R Joshi. Rest in peace.
Joshi, a distinguished scientist and a brilliant innovator, was a civil engineer by training. He was an expert in military bridging. His work included MLAB, the manually launched assault bridge and Sarvatra, a multi-span bridging system. The idea in these unique systems was to help Indian soldiers make rapid advances in difficult terrains with lightweight bridging equipment.
Joshi was relentless in his pursuit of applying information technology to engineering, administration and knowledge management.His establishment was the first to have a local area network in the city of Pune. He worked towards a paperless office, and pursued several ways to foster knowledge sharing and collaboration amongst project teams using computer systems.
It is in these areas that Harbinger in its early days became a trusted software provider and partner of DRDO. For an engagement spanning several years in the early '90s, Harbinger continued innovating software applications with inspiration from Mr Joshi.
Recipient of many awards, Mr Joshi was a remarkable person to know. At the time we worked with him, he was about two times my age, and yet always managed to make the difference disappear. The Establishment would organize classical music concerts, and he would personally send a signed invitation every time. Harbinger was a 10-people company back then, and this vendor treatment was indeed very special, as you can imagine.
Joshi had a deep regard for the military genius of Leonardo Da Vinci, combined with the great master's legendary art. His home was decorated with his favorite Leonardo paintings. His loyal dog was named Ermine. When he commissioned a beautiful new auditorium on the R&DE campus, he named it Leonardo da Vinci Auditorium. It took him a few trips to Delhi to convince the bureaucrats and politicians that this was a good idea.
Mr APJ Abdul Kalam, who later became the President of India, was his immediate boss, and paid him glowing tributes for his work.
Dr S Guruprasad, a young and promising scientist who worked in his team, later went on the become the establishment's director. In a fitting coincidence, he felicitated Joshi on the occasion of the establishment's golden jubilee.
Team Harbinger cannot stop counting its good fortunes - this great man was certainly one of them. We will miss you, M R Joshi. Rest in peace.
This is shocking news. We indeed have lost one of India’s eminent scientists. I knew him as my father’s close friend and watched their intellectual conversations. He was an absolutely warm person who had an art of making everyone feel at ease and comfort.
ReplyDeleteThanks to Vikas I could experience another facet of him as a Board of Advisor to Harbingers. I sincerely hope and pray that your family can bear this huge loss and may your soul rest in peace.
Pratima Singh
Vikas,
ReplyDeleteA great loss for all of us.What always impressed me was the way he blended aesthetic sense with everything he had undertaken.He was so perfectionist in all his activities from innovative technologies to art collection, from Leonardo-da-vinci to Mirza Galib.And still he carried his scholarship/achievements so very lightly..! A rare individual and a great human being. May his soul rest in Beauty always.
Datta Dandge
I was fortunate to work closly with Mr. Joshi in the early days of HKPPL back in 1997. For the information of content team I want to mention that we had developed 2 CBTs for DRDO and these were initiated by Mr. Joshi.
ReplyDeleteFor me he was a very intelligent and sensitive person. Also a fatherly personality. Once you start interacting with him nothing looks impossible. He had special skill to always boost your confidence.
We will definitely miss you Sir. Rest in peace.
- Jayant Kulkarni
I was fortunate to work closely with Mr. M. R. Joshi during our (Harbinger’s) work with DRDO in early 90’s. He was a person of ideas. Mr. Joshi used to clearly communicate his futuristic thoughts and helped define innovative solutions. He used to follow-through implementation with his in-depth involvement and eye for detail.
ReplyDeleteMr. Joshi was a true leader. He evangelized, educated his team and got their buy-in for the innovative ideas. His passion was infectious.
In spite of his busy schedule, he accepted our invitation to be the chief guest at one of our annual functions and cheered the team at Harbinger. We were a young company then and having a role model like Mr. Joshi around us helped in strengthening our beliefs.
We will miss you Sir. May your soul rest in peace.
- Swati Ketkar