Rajeev Motwani was found dead at his home last Friday, in his swimming pool. Rajeev Motwani was a computer scientist at Standford and was known as a technical genius and a close friend and advisor to Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
According to reports, Motwani was having a party on Friday because the school year had ended, but after the party he went out to his pool to smoke a cigar. His body was discovered in the pool the next morning by the family’s nanny.
Motwani gave advice to both Bring and Page when they were at Standford, and the advice he gave led to creation of Google. Motwani also invested early in Google, and the online payment system PayPal.
Google’s Sergey Brin wrote on his own blog:
As Google emerged from Stanford, Rajeev remained a friend and advisor as he has with many people and startups since. Of all the faculty at Stanford, it is with Rajeev that I have stayed the closest and I will miss him deeply. Yet his legacy and personality lives on in the students, projects, and companies he has touched. Today, whenever you use a piece of technology, there is a good chance a little bit of Rajeev Motwani is behind it.
