Dabbala Rajagopal “”Raj”” Reddy is widely considered to be the father of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in India. Born on 13 June 1937, Reddy is an Indian-American computer scientist and a winner of the prestigious Turing Award. He is one of the early pioneers of AI and has served on the faculty of Stanford and Carnegie Mellon for over 50 years.
Reddy was born in the village of Chintalapudi in West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh, India. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Andhra University in 1958 and his Master’s degree in 1959 from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. He then moved to the United States to pursue his doctoral studies at Stanford University, where he was supervised by John McCarthy, the inventor of the Lisp programming language. Reddy received his PhD in 1966 and subsequently joined the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University.
At Carnegie Mellon, Reddy founded the Robotics Institute in 1979 and served as its first director. He was also the founding director of the university’s School of Computer Science. During his tenure at Carnegie Mellon, Reddy and his students developed several AI-based systems, including a natural language understanding system, a speech recognition system, and a robot that could navigate a building.
Reddy has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the ACM Turing Award in 1994, the Padma Bhushan in 2001, and the ACM India Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017. He has also been inducted into the National Academy of Engineering, the Indian National Science Academy, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Reddy has authored several books on AI, including “Foundations of Artificial Intelligence” (1984), “The Coming Age of Artificial Intelligence” (1986), and “The Age of Intelligent Machines” (1990). He has also served as an advisor to several governments and organizations, including the Indian government and the World Bank.
Reddy is widely regarded as the father of AI in India. His pioneering work in the field has laid the foundation for the development of AI-based systems in the country. His work has also inspired a generation of AI researchers in India, and his legacy will continue to be remembered for years to come.