R ajeev Motwani, a leading computer scientist and Stanford University professor who developed new ways to search enormous databases and mentored the founders of Google, has died. He was 47
Motwani apparently drowned in the pool at his Atherton, Calif., home, where his body was found June 5, the university announced. Friends said he did not know how to swim
Atherton police are waiting for results of an autopsy before investigating what appears to be an accidental death, a police spokesman said June 9
After learning of Motwani's death, Google co-founder Sergey Brin wrote on his blog: "Today, whenever you use a piece of technology, there is a good chance a little bit of Rajeev Motwani is behind it." Motwani was a specialist in data mining, or developing ways to filter and organize the endless
sea of information on the Internet
His work in the field of algo- rithms – the sets of instructions that computers
follow to solve a specific problem – was considered groundbreaking
In 1998, Motwani wrote a paper with Brin, Larry Page and another Stanford researcher that announced the quartet had developed a system to globally rank Web pages "to develop anovel search engine called Google." That year,
Google Inc. was founded by Brin and Page, Stanford graduate students who consistently gave Motwani credit for helping them create the search engine that has
come to dominate the Internet
Motwani's connection to Google made him feel like he "contributed a little bit" to history, he later said

"Now I have become a startup junkie." In Silicon Valley, he was known for nurturing and investing in many small, emerging companies
Born in 1962 in Jammu, India, Motwani grew up in New Delhi. His father had a career in the Indian army
Childhood reading on famous scien
tists and mathematicians triggered his interest in math, he later said, but he studied computer science because his parents didn't think he could make
a living as a mathematician
To his "wonderful surprise," computer science was "quite mathematical as a field," Motwani later recalled
At the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Motwani earned a bachelor's degree in computer science in 1983. Five years later, he received his doctorate in the same field from the University of California, Berkeley, and joined the Stanford faculty
Motwani's major contributions to the foundations of computer science included work on robotics and search and information retrieval, the university said in a statement. "In addition to being a brilliant computer scientist," Brin wrote on his blog, "Rajeev was a very kind and amicable person and his door was always open. ... I could always stop by his office for an interesting conversation or a friendly smile."Motwani is survived by his wife, Asha Jadeja; two daughters, Naitri and Anya; and two brothers
– LA Times/Washington Post