Professor Jay Misra

Read his speeches.

I had the opportunity to meet Professor Misra when he came to give a talk at NC State in 2008. What I took from his talk was the beauty of minimality: how a computer scientist must strive to find the minimal set of operators or specification constructs and then build everything systematically from those.

Earlier that day, Munindar (my PhD advisor) had taken me to Professor Misra's hotel so we could talk over breakfast. Three generations ate together -- Munindar was once Professor Misra's student at UT Austin. And that day, I observed that Munindar was still his student.

Read Professor Misra's speeches, and you will know why he deserves all our admiration.

Unfortunately for me, I didn't impress him much.