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IIT Kanpur

Research Institute in Kanpur, India

  • 16 min read
  • 8 chapters

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History

IIT Kanpur was established by an Act of Parliament in 1960 by the Government of India. The institute was started in December 1959, initially in the campus of Harcourt Butler Technological Institute at Agricultural Gardens in Kanpur. In 1963, the institute moved to its present location, on the Grand Trunk Road near Kalyanpur locality in Kanpur district. The campus, which is planned and landscaped with the goal of environmental freedom, ease of movement and communication, was designed by Achyut Kanvinde.

During the first ten years of its existence, a consortium of nine US universities (namely MIT, University of California at Berkeley, California Institute of Technology, Princeton University, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Michigan, Ohio State University, Case Western Reserve University and Purdue University) helped set up IIT Kanpur's research laboratories and academic programmes under the Kanpur Indo-American Programme (KIAP). The first director of the institute was P. K. Kelkar (after whom the Central Library was renamed in 2002).

Under the guidance of economist John Kenneth Galbraith, IIT Kanpur was the first institute in India to offer Computer science education. The earliest computer course was started at the institute in August 1963 on an IBM 1620 system. The initiative for computer education came from the Electrical engineering department, then under the chairmanship of Prof. H.K. Kesavan, who was concurrently the chairman of Electrical Engineering and head of the Computer Centre. Prof. Harry Huskey of the University of California, Berkeley, who preceded Kesavan, helped with the computer activity at IIT-Kanpur. In 1971, the institute began an independent academic program in Computer Science and Engineering, leading to MTech and PhD degrees.

In 1972 the KIAP program ended, in part because of political tensions between India and Pakistan (as the USA supported Pakistan). Government funding was also reduced as a reaction to the sentiment that the IIT's were contributing to the brain drain.

The institute's annual technical festival, Techkriti, was first started in 1995.

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