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K. Lakshminarayana was born on October 12th, 1938, in Tenali, a town in Andhra Pradesh, India.  His father, Dr. K. Bhimeswara Rao, was a physician (general practitioner and obstetrician).  His mother was K. Ratnamanikyamma. He displayed an affinity for mathematics at an early age.  Occasionally, he would help his sister, older by two years, with the problems at her grade level.  Another talent he had was in drawing botanical and other scientific sketches.  His handwriting was beautiful in both English and Telugu. His students, who took his kinematics course much later in his life, will vouch for this fact. He would usually fill up the board with beautiful line drawings of linkages and would complement them with equally elegant equations and text.

 

       After completing his schooling as the top-ranked student at the local high school, he went to Guntur, a nearby town, for his Intermediate (11th and 12th standard) studies, with an emphasis on the sciences.  He was initially enrolled in a biology course following his father's desire for him to eventually become a medical doctor.  However, after a short while, the mismatch was corrected and he took up mathematics instead. It was natural for him to pursue engineering studies next.  He was selected in 1955 for admission through the first ever entrance examination for the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). He received his BTech degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1959 from IIT, Kharagpur.  He was one of only six students in his class receiving purely merit-based scholarships.  He continued at IIT, Kharagpur and completed the MTech programme in Mechanical Engineering in 1960.

 

      Between 1961 and 1963, he worked in Bombay as a Design Engineer at Dynacraft and Godrey & Boyce.  At this time, he developed an interest in mechanisms and wanted to do research in the area. He joined the Mechanical Engineering department at IIT-Madras on October 11, 1963 as a lecturer.  He took up his teaching work with enthusiasm and dedication.

 

         In August 1966, he married Rajyalakshmi, who hailed from Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh.  Their first son, Eswar, was born in 1967, and the second son, Sudhakar, in 1968.

 

         He conducted his doctoral research during this time and completed all the requirements for the degree well within the stipulated time.  In September or October 1968, he spent a month at IIT-Kanpur to perform the computer work needed for his thesis.  He received the Ph.D. degree from IIT-Madras in August 1969.  Professor R. G. Narayana Murthi was the adviser.  The title of his PhD thesis was “Synthesis of Plane Lower Pair Mechanisms for Bivariate Function Generation”. Professor F. Freudenstein, who is considered as the father of modern kinematics, was one of the thesis examiners.  Prof. Freudenstein had noted that the subject matter, expression, and language used in the thesis were all at such a high level that the work was eligible for being awarded a doctorate anywhere in the world.

 

       He spent nearly two years from late 1969 on a DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) scholarship at Braunschweig in the erstwhile West Germany.  His family joined him for some part of this stay.  He was promoted to Assistant Professor in 1970 while he was still in Germany.

 

             As his sons were growing up, he stimulated their interest in mathematics and mechanics.  He devised novel methods of speed arithmetic, trigonometry proofs, and intuitive explanations of calculus concepts.  Over the years, there were many more such results of creative thinking on his part.

 

            He visited at Braunschweig again in the academic year 1976-77, this time on an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation scholarship.  He did his celebrated work on form closure in mechanisms during this time. His paper entitled “Mechanics of Form Closure” (ASME Paper 78-DET-32,1978) has become a classic cited a few hundred times with a most recent citation in 2011. In August 1980, he was promoted to Professor.

 

         He and his students conducted research in the area of mechanisms at the Machine Elements laboratory in IIT-Madras.  He taught many courses at the BTech., MTech., and PhD levels. Students revered his courses. Students found his courses tough because his standards of teaching were very high. Those who learnt kinematics from him were empowered with the correct way of thinking about the subject. His judiciously mixed intuition and rigour in his teaching. Much of the material he taught in his “Mechanisms and Transmissions” course at IIT-Madras cannot be found in most modern texts. His derivations were insightful. Such basic concepts as Kutzbach-Grübler’s formula and Grashof criterion became profound because of the manner he taught them. His treatment of epicyclic gear trains and their input output torque relation considering friction, synthesis of Geneva wheel-based indexing device, and star wheels were original.

 

      His approach to synthesis of mechanism was unparalleled. He combined his deep understanding of geometry with keen analytical skills to come up with straightforward synthesis procedures. One example is the synthesis of cam-operated mechanisms in which a cam is the output member and the roller-crank is the driving member. He devised ingenious methods in which the limits of transmission angle can be discerned while satisfying arbitrary motion specifications including indexing, multiple swells and reversal of motion.

 

        His laboratory in IIT-Madras had a precious collection of mechanism models, many sourced from Institut für Landtechnische Grundlagenforschung, Braunschweig-Vőlkenrode, West Germany. He encouraged his students to build models. Those who worked with him know that he had thorough understanding of practical aspects of making prototypes and their implications in eventual manufacturing. His interests were not confined to kinemaics.  He was interested in machine design as a whole.  He translated Niemann's book on Machine Elements Design into English, along with some of his colleagues.

 

       His inspiring research career ended abruptly while he was still in service. He passed away on April 13, 1997, in Madras after a massive heart attack.  As on 2014, his wife, K. Rajyalakshmi, lived in Madras, in an area called Velachery, adjacent to the IIT campus. The older son, Dr. Kalluri Eswar, is a Software Engineer at Google, in Mountain View, California.  The younger son, Dr. Sudhakar Kalluri, is a Principal Member of Technical Staff at Ikanos Communications, in Fremont, California.

 

G. K. Ananthasuresh

Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru

December, 2019