Charles Babbage - Father of Mechanical Calculation

Charles Babbage was born in London, England December 26, 1791. Babbage suffered from many childhood illnesses, which forced his family to send him to a clergy operated school for special care.

Babbage became interested in Astronomy and the equipment used to study the heavens. This appears to be the time when Charles got the idea for a mechanical calculation device. Frustrated with the waste of time and money used to create logarithmic table manually, Babbage invented the Difference Machine to create these tables. The success of this endeavor led Babbage to envision a device that could perform any calculation. Dubbed the Analytical Engine, Babbage received funding from the government to turn the dream into a reality. Unfortunately, Babbage was never able to finish the project as the whims of politics and funding decisions forced the project to be dismissed after a few flawed programs were beta tested. The logic of the process and structure of the engine formed the basis of the calculation process of the modern computer

Sabeer Bhatia

Sabeer Bhatia was born in Chandigarh, India on 13th december 1968. His father, Baldev Bhatia, started as an officer in the Indian Army and later joined the Indian Ministry of Defence, while his mother, Daman Bhatia, was a senior official at the Central Bank of India.[1] Bhatia was schooled at the St. Joseph's Boys' High School in Bangalore. In 1985, he began his undergraduate education at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) in Pilani and was transferred to Caltech after two years at BITS. After graduating from Caltech, Sabeer went to Stanford University in 1989 to pursue his M.S. in Electrical Engineering. At Stanford, he worked on Ultra Low Power VLSI Design.

After a brief stint at Apple, Sabeer joined a startup company called Firepower Systems Inc, where he spent two years. In 1994, Sabeer started working on new ideas for the Internet and he teamed up with Jack Smith, a colleague from Apple Computer, Inc.

The two came up with the concept of a web-based database entitled Javasoft. While pursuing this idea, they subsequently realised the potential of a web-based e-mail system and thus decided to create one called HoTMaiL (the uppercase letters spelling out HTML - the language used to write the base of a webpage).In order to attract attention, the e-mail service was provided for free and revenue was obtained through the advertising on the website. Draper Fisher Ventures invested $300,000 on the project and the service was launched on July 4, 1996.

In less than six months, the website attracted over 1 million subscribers. As the interest in the web-based email provider increased, Microsoft eventually took notice and on December 30, 1997, Hotmail was sold to Microsoft for a reported sum of $400 million.

He got married to Tania Sharma, heiress of the Baidyanath group, in 2008. They have known each other for eight years as friends. They got married in a private ceremony in Langkawi, Malaysia.

Kalpana Chawla

Kalpana Chawla was born in Karnal, Haryana, India. Kalpana in Sanskrit means "imagination of the mind" and thus also "creation." Her interest in flying was inspired by J. R. D. Tata, a pioneering Indian pilot and industrialist.

Chawla joined the NASA astronaut corps in March 1995 and was selected for her first flight in 1998 Her first space mission began on November 19, 1997 as part of the six astronaut crew that flew the Space Shuttle Columbia flight STS-87. Chawla was the first Indian-born woman and the second person of Indian origin to fly in space, following cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma who flew in 1984 in a Soviet spacecraft. It must be noted that while Rakesh Sharma represented India, Chawla was an American astronaut who represented the United States. Sharma and Chawla never met despite their common interests. On her first mission Chawla traveled over 10.4 million miles in 252 orbits of the earth, logging more than 360 hours in space. During STS-87, she was responsible for deploying the Spartan Satellite which malfunctioned, necessitating a spacewalk by Winston Scott and Takao Doi to capture the satellite. A five-month NASA investigation fully exonerated Chawla by identifying errors in software interfaces and the defined procedures of flight crew and ground control.

In 2000 she was selected for her second flight as part of the crew of STS-107. This mission was repeatedly delayed due to scheduling conflicts and technical problems such as the July 2002 discovery of cracks in the shuttle engine flow liners. On January 16, 2003 Chawla finally returned to space aboard Columbia on the ill-fated STS-107 mission. Chawla's responsibilities included the SPACEHAB/FREESTAR microgravity experiments, for which the crew conducted nearly 80 experiments studying earth and space science, advanced technology development, and astronaut health and safety.

Chawla's last visit to India was during the 1991 - 1992 new year holiday when she and her husband spent time with her family. For various reasons, Chawla was never able to follow up on invitations to visit India after she became an astronaut.

Diana Princess of Wales

Lady Diana Spencer was born July 1, 1961 at Althorp, her family’s estate, in England. Relatively unknown to the general public, she worked as a nanny and kindergarten teacher until February 24, 1981 when it was officially announced that Lady Diana, age 19 years, was to marry Charles, The Prince of Wales, age 32 years.They were married July 29, 1981 at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London in a ceremony which gained world wide attention. The reception was held at Buckingham Palace.The Prince and Princess of Wales had two sons. Prince William Arthur Philip Louis was born on 21 June 21, 1982 and Prince Henry (Harry) Charles Albert David on 15 September 1984.
She died Sunday, 31 August 1997 after a terrible car accident in Paris, France. Following the funeral service in London, her coffin was taken to the family estate at Althorp, where she was buried on an island in the center of an ornamental lake.

Although the Princess was renowned for her style and was closely associated with the fashion world, she was best known for her charitable work, including the last appearance she make in this regard, working to ban the use of land mines.

Rabindranath Tagore

Mystic, painter and Nobel laureate for literature, Rabindranath Tagore was a prolific writer (3,000 poems, 2,000 songs, 8 novels, 40 volumes of essays and short stories, 50 plays), who drew inspiration both from his native Bengal and from English literary tradition. His major theme was humanity's search for God and truth. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his collection of well-known poems Gitanjali (Song Offerings).Born in Calcutta on May 7, 1861, Rabindranath was the youngest of fourteen children. His father, Debendranath Tagore, was a Sanskrit scholar and a leading member of the Brahmo Samaj. Rabindranath's early education was imparted at home. In school, while others use to learn their lessons, he would slip into more exciting world of dreams. Inspired by his older nephew, he wrote his first poem when he was hardly seven. At the age of seventeen, his first book of poems was published.Tragically, between 1902 and 1907, Tagore lost his wife, son and daughter. But out of his pain emerged some of his most tender work, including Gitanjali, published in 1910. Tagore remained a true patriot, supporting the national movement and writing the lyrics of the "Jana Gana Mana", which is India's national anthem.