| Hiremagalur Krishnaswamy Kesavan | |
| Birth Date: | 1926 6, df=yes |
| Birth Place: | Bangalore, Mysore State (now Karnataka), India |
| Death Place: | Waterloo, Ontario, Canada |
| Field: | Electrical engineering Systems theory Information theory |
| Alma Mater: | University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Michigan State University |
| Workplaces: | Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur University of Waterloo |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Herman E. Koenig |
| Known For: | Linear graph theory, entropy optimization |
Hiremagalur Krishnaswamy Kesavan, known as H. K. Kesavan (14 June 1926 – 26 November 2014), was an Indian professor in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
H.K. Kesavan was born on 14 June 1926 in Bangalore, India.[1] He received his undergraduate degrees in science and engineering from the Central College and the Government Engineering College (now called University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering) in Bangalore. He received his M.S. degree from the University of Illinois in 1956 and his Ph.D. from Michigan State University in 1959, both in electrical engineering. He was an instructor at Michigan State from 1956 to 1959, and assistant professor in 1959–1960.[1]
In 1960, he was appointed as associate professor at the University of Waterloo,[1] eventually serving as chairman of the Electrical Engineering department. During this time, he also spent a year back at Michigan State where he finished co-authoring his first book, Analysis of Discrete Physical Systems, co-authored with Herman Koenig and Yilmaz Tokad and published several years later.[2]
For a period of five years, he returned to India to serve as the first chairman of Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and concurrently as head of its nationally significant Computer Centre. He was also the first Dean of Research and Development at the IIT.[3]
He returned to Waterloo to serve as the founding chairman of the Department of Systems Design engineering. He has published numerous technical papers and books on systems theory, applications of linear graph theory and entropy optimization principles.
Kesavan maintained a lifelong interest in the philosophical aspects of science. His book, Science and Spirituality presents a global view of Vedic philosophy from the insights that science and spirituality provide.