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I was perhaps the first Ph.D. Gift Siromoney carved out from suggesting the problem to the final stage of typing the thesis. He typed the entire thesis himself, with me reading it out systematically doing 10 pages a day and then filling in the mathematical symbols not available in the typewriter of those days. Professor Bennet Albert, looking at the finished product, commented that it was a "labour of love"! Soon after he received the Ph.D in 1964 and Arul had started going to school, he proposed a problem in grammar. I thought that it would be very difficult for me, with an abstract and formal mathematical training, to work on Tamil grammar. However with constant help, my first paper was on "Grammar of Dravidian Number Names " published in "Foundations of Language".

Gradually, I moved on to "Formal languages and Automata Theory". One day in 1967, from nowhere, he produced the first original paper on Matrix Grammars (journals were not easily available and there was no internet to get the paper downloaded !!) which formed the basis for my paper "On Equal Matrix Languages" which led me on to my Ph D thesis. Every time a research paper was accepted for publication in a journal, a big box of biscuits (chocolates were not common then !), from West Tambaram, will arrive in our house on campus he would have slipped out quietly on his motorbike to get it!

When a technical paper is co-authored by several, it is not nice nor proper to dissect it to analyse the contributions made by each author individually. However, I cannot help mentioning two very novel ideas of his, which bloomed into significant definitions, leading on to theoretical results one that of "arrow-head catenation" and the other that of "kolam moves".

Any new idea will look unbelievable to venture into but his relentless persuasion and insight helped to weave a rich theory based on simple observations.

Rani Siromoney ( 1951-88, Ph.D, 1969)
Currently: Professor Emeritus, Department of Computer Science, Madras Christian College and
Adjunct Professor, Chennai Mathematical Institute.