Share
MIT and the Technological Indian - a talk by Professor Ross Bassett

MIT and the Technological Indian

MIT and the Technological Indian - a talk by Professor Ross Bassett

10 March 2016 05:00PM

In the late 1800s, Indians seemed to be a people left behind by the Industrial Revolution, dismissed as “not a mechanical race”. Today Indians are among the world’s leaders in engineering and technology. How did this change come about?

Leading technological historian Professor Ross Bassett used a unique database of every Indian who graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (between 1882-2000) to write his seminal book The Technological Indian. At his talk ‘MIT and the Technological Indian’, presented by Godrej Archives and Godrej India Culture Lab, he charted the ascent of these MIT alumni to the pinnacle of high-tech professions across the world. He spoke about how a group of Indians – from Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to private business owners to graduates from IIT - sought a way forward for our country through technology.

About Ross Bassett:
Ross Bassett is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at North Carolina State University. He has a BS in electrical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in history from Cornell and a PhD in history from Princeton University. His first book, To the Digital Age: Research Labs, Start-Ups and the Rise of MOS Technology, was a history of MOS (Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor) transistor technology.

In a special blogpost for the Lab, professor Ross Bassett made a list of the top Indians who went to MIT and have had a lasting impact on the country’s standing in the technology industry across the world. Read the blog here.