engineering

K. P. P. Nambiar

K. P. P. Nambiar is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand K. P. P. Nambiar rather than just read about it. In short: Kunnath Puthiyaveettil Padmanabhan Nambiar DIC (Lond), FIEE (Lond), CEngg (Lond.), more popularly known as K.P.P. Nambiar (15 April 1929 – 30 June 2015), was an Indian industrialist and technocrat, known for his work in the field of industrial development and technology.

Key takeaways

K. P. P. Nambiar belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect K. P. P. Nambiar to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of K. P. P. Nambiar from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Kunnath Puthiyaveettil Padmanabhan Nambiar DIC (Lond), FIEE (Lond), CEngg (Lond.), more popularly known as K.P.P. Nambiar (15 April 1929 – 30 June 2015), was an Indian industrialist and technocrat, known for his work in the field of industrial development and technology. He was awarded Padma Bhushan by Government of India for his contributions to the field of technology in 2006.

Career Nambiar went to Moothedath High School in Taliparamba. He graduated from Pachayyappa's College in Madras where he studied physics. In 1951, he joined the Imperial College of Science & Technology, University of London for higher studies in Transistors and Semi-Conductors. Nambiar started his career as a research scholar in semiconductor technology at Imperial College from 1954 to 1957. After graduation, he worked for Texas Instruments, USA. In 1963 he returned to India, as a part of the scientist pool scheme initiated by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to bring back talented Indians working abroad. He was a "scientist pool officer" under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. He taught modern semiconductor electronics in the Electrical Engineering Department of the Indian Institute of Technology, in New Delhi. Nambiar joined Philips India as Manager of Projects in 1964. In 1967, he joined Bharat Electronics Limited as Joint Head of the Piezo Electric Crystal Division in Bangalore, where he set up the first communication crystals factory in India during his brief stay there. In 1967, while at Tata Electric Companies, he set up the first applied electronic research and development centre for industrial electronics in India. In late 1967, Nambiar was also the general manager of National Radio & Electronics Company, in Tata's consumer electronics division. He was instrumental in introducing a number of new products under such as speed control for AC and DC motors, static inverters and converters, calculators, electronic clocks, and display systems. Silicon transistor radios were introduced for the first time in the country in 1968 by NELCO during this period. In the early 1970s, he received an invitation from the Kerala government to set up an electronics manufacturing firm. Kerala State Electronics Development Corporation Limited (Keltron) was formed with Nambiar as its first chairman and managing director. He remained in that position until 1983 when he was made the executive chairman until his retirement in 1985. In order to have a robust Research and development to support indigenous manufacturing he set up Electronics Research and Development Centre (ER & DC) at Thiruvananthapuram in 1980. Interestingly KELTRON was the blue print for Maharashtra to start MELTRON, Uttar Pradesh to start UPTRON, Bihar to start BELTRON and West Bengal to set up West Bengal Electronics Industry Development Corporation (WEBEL) which gave solid ground for television revolution in India in 1980's. In 1985, Indira Gandhi appointed Nambiar as the chairman and managing director of Indian Telephone Industries Limited, the largest public sector company in telecommunications. In 1986, Nambiar was appointed secretary of the Department of Electronics of Government of India (now the Ministry of Information Technology) by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. During this stint the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing was formed with Pune as its headquarters merging his earlier initiatives such as ER&DC, Trivandrum to it. He retired from government service in 1989. The Kerala government, in 1989, appointed him as an honorary special advisor. In this consultancy role, he drew up the blueprint for Technopark, Trivandrum. The park was inaugurated on 31 March 1991. When acting as special advisor, Nambiar set up a private company in Bangalore, Namtech Electronic Devices Limited, for the manufacture of fail safe gas discharge tubes used as surge arresters in electronic and telecommunication equipment. Namtech is also involved in the manufacture of quartz crystals, crystal oscillators, qne light emitting diodes and displays. In February 1995, Nambiar under the aegis of KPP Nambiar Associates and its Mauritius based subsidiary Kortech Corporation (with a 24% stake) launched an INR 1471 Crore Naphtha based power project to generate 513 megawatts of electricity under the name of Kannur Power Projects in his native Panchayat of Kalliasseri in the Kannur District in Kerala. However, the project ran into political and supply issues and had to be abandoned. The then ruling LDF government was against participation of another major global player Enron International with 74% stake in the project. He was also instrumental in the launching of a joint venture company Bowthorpe Thermometrics, with Bowthorpe of UK and Namtech Consultants to manufacture thermistors in 1996. Bowthorpe has since transferred its ownership to General Electric in October 2001. Nambiar suffered a stroke in 2002 and he died on 30 June 2015 at the age of 86 in Bengaluru.

Personal life Nambiar was born in Kalliasseri, North Malabar (now Kannur district, Kerala) to P. P. Chindan Nambiar and K. P. Madhavi. He had four brothers and five sisters. From his marriage to Marjorie Agnes Nambiar in London in 1953, he had a daughter and a son. While living in Bombay, he met and married Saroja Kamakshi, mother of Indian classical dancer, Malavika Sarukkai. In the 1980s, Nambiar married again, to Uma Devi of Calicut. They had one son.

Legacy

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with K. P. P. Nambiar

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what K. P. P. Nambiar claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to K. P. P. Nambiar before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about K. P. P. Nambiar ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of K. P. P. Nambiar

In research: K. P. P. Nambiar appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses K. P. P. Nambiar in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: K. P. P. Nambiar is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1929 births, 2015 deaths, Businesspeople from Kerala, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for K. P. P. Nambiar outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study K. P. P. Nambiar in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what K. P. P. Nambiar means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain K. P. P. Nambiar out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is K. P. P. Nambiar in simple terms?

Why does K. P. P. Nambiar matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study K. P. P. Nambiar?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on K. P. P. Nambiar.