JitNik's Tech World

Brilliant computer scientist who was crucial to the development of the Google search engine

Motwani was best known for mentoring Sergey Brin and Larry Page in their student days at Stanford University in California, where he was professor of computer science. As their search engine took shape, Motwani became their technical adviser and guided several other computer-based companies including PayPal, in which he was an early investor. A shrewd businessman as well as an acclaimed computer scientist, he also owned an undisclosed amount of stock in Google.

At Stanford University, where Motwani was one of the youngest professors, he started the Mining Data at Stanford project (MIDAS), a group that helped develop data-management concepts. The author of several papers in esoteric subjects like randomised algorithms and data streaming, his research spanned many areas in computer science, including databases and data privacy, web search and information retrieval, robotics, computational drug design, and theoretical computer science.

Asked to explain how Google's technology works, Motwani offered a typical illustration. "Let us say that you wanted information on 'bread yeast' and put those two words in Google. Then it not only sees which documents have these as words mentioned but also whether these documents are linked to other documents. An important page for 'bread yeast' must be having all other pages on the Web dealing in any way with 'bread yeast' also linking to it.
"In our example there may be a Bakers' Association of America, which is hyperlinked by most documents containing 'bread yeast', then it implies that most people involved with 'bread' and 'yeast' think that the Bakers Association's web site is an important source of information. So Google will rate that web site very high and put it on top of its list. Irrelevant documents which just mention 'bread' and 'yeast' will not be given any priority in the results.

In spite of his achievements, Motwani cheerfully conceded that the Google search engine did no more than a humble librarian – and was less intelligent. But he also pointed out that automatic software trumped the old technology in coping with the exponential rise in information.
Rajeev Motwani was born in New Delhi, India, on March 26 1962. His father was in the Indian Army and he spent a nomadic childhood following his father's postings to various parts of India. Young Rajeev wanted to be a mathematician, like his hero Carl Friedrich Gauss. "This was partly shaped by the books I had at home. My parents for some reason had a lot of these books – 10 great scientists or five famous mathematicians – their life story and so on. As a child, whatever heroes you read about you want to become."

He left St Columba's school in Delhi still hoping to be a mathematician, but his parents were sceptical about his prospects of making a living. Instead he joined Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, which had just started an undergraduate programme in computer science. He obtained his bachelor's degree in computer science there in 1983 and his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1988.
He wrote two books, Randomized Algorithms, published by Cambridge University Press in 1995, and an undergraduate textbook published in 2001. A kind, approachable man, Motwani was still active as a professor and was teaching a couple of classes as recently as last year, despite his financial success with his internet start-ups.
His awards include the Godel Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in theoretical computer science, the Okawa Foundation Research Award and the Arthur Sloan Research Fellowship, the National Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation, the Distinguished Alumnus Award from IIT Kanpur, the Bergmann Memorial Award from the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation, and an IBM Faculty Award.


Rajeev Motwani, who was found dead in his swimming pool on June 5, was a non-swimmer and had been considering taking lessons. He had apparently drowned after a party to celebrate the end of the academic year.