Google on Saturday honoured iconic Indian engineer Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya with a doodle on his 158th birth anniversary. In India, September 15 is celebrated as Engineer’s Day in his memory.
Visvesvaraya was born in the village of Muddenahalli in the former kingdom of Mysore – present day Karnataka – in 1860. “While some sources cite his birth year as 1861, after speaking to his family, we have learned that Sir MV was actually born a year earlier,” Google said.
After earning a licence in civil engineering from the University of Bombay, Visvesvaraya began working with the city’s Public Works Division and joined the Indian Irrigation Commission. His work provided him with the opportunity to study the water supply and drainage of the Yemeni port city of Yemen.
Visvesvaraya was the chief engineer responsible for the construction of the Krishna Raja Sagar dam in Karnataka’s Mandya district. The dam was built in 1924 and that time was India’s largest reservoir and provided drinking water to several cities. Visvesvaraya was also the chief engineer of Hyderabad’s flood protection and drew up irrigation plans for Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh.
King George V of England knighted him as a Knight Commander of the British Indian Empire for his contributions to public good, and in 1995 he received the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honour.
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