Death Summary: Rajeev Motwani was found dead in a swimming pool on Friday June 5, 2009 from an apparent drowning.

The news of Motwani's death hit blogosphere pretty hard. Below is a quote from Sergey Brin about Motwani...

When my interest turned to data mining, Rajeev helped to coordinate a regular meeting group on the subject. Even though I was just one of hundreds of graduate students in the department, he always made the time and effort to help. Later, when Larry and I began to work together on the research that would lead to Google, Rajeev was there to support us and guide us through challenges, both technical and organizational.

Eventually, as Google emerged from Stanford, Rajeev remained a friend and advisor as he has with many people and startups since. Of all the faculty at Stanford, it is with Rajeev that I have stayed the closest and I will miss him dearly. Yet his legacy and personality lives on in the students, projects, and companies he has touched. Today, whenever you use a piece of technology, there is a good chance a little bit of Rajeev Motwani is behind it.

Below is some kind words from Om Malik of GigaOm.

It is hard for me to write this post — this morning the news of Steve Jobs’ improving health put me in a good mood. My day is ending with a broken heart and tears in my eyes. It is the day which reminds you of the unpredictability of life. Rajeev and I had been swapping emails, hoping to get together for a cup of coffee and discussions about technology. Alas, that shall never be.

Who was Rajeev Motwani : Motwani, an angel investor and Stanford professor, who served as a mentor to the Google co-founders as they were initially developing Google.

Motwani graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1988 with a Ph.D in Computer Science.

At Stanford Motwani served as a professor and director of graduate studies for the database group/infolab, and Foundations Group.

Some of his research interests include...

Databases, data mining, information retrieval, and web searching. Privacy and security, particularly in the context of databases and information retrieval. Optimization and scheduling problems, particularly for applications in computer systems, compilers, and databases. Computational and combinatorial geometry with applications to robotics and vision. Computational biology and automated drug design. Design and analysis of algorithms with emphasis on approximations, online computations, and randomized algorithms, as well as related complexity theory.

Categories: Internet, Scientists.