PERSONS APRIL 2011

PERSONS APRIL 2011

• Lewis Binford, a renowned archaeologist and founder of the New Archaeology movement died at the age of 80 on 11 April 2011. Professor Binford revolutionised archaeology in the 1960s and 1970s by elevating its status from a descriptive study of antiquities to a scientific discipline devoted to anthropological understanding of ways of life of ancient societies. 
• B. Muthuraman- Tata Steel Vice-Chairman has been elected new President of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) for 2011-12. Mr. Muthuraman succeeds Hari Bhartia of Jubilant Organosys. Infosys Technologies CEO and Managing Director S. Gopalakrishnan has been elected Vice-President for 2011-12 
• Ram Reddy-Noted Telugu film actor, who played the villain's role in numerous films, died after a prolonged illness on 14 April. 
• Leading global consumer goods firm Reckitt Benckiser Group (RB) announced the appointment of India-born Rakesh Kapoor as the Chief Executive Officer. 
• Pop star Jennifer Lopez has beaten off competition from younger beauties such as Beyonce Knowles and Anne Hathaway to be named the World's Most Beautiful Woman by People magazine. 
• Rani Mukherjee- Bollywood actor received the 2011 YFLO ZOYA Young Women Achievers Award from Union Minister for Culture, Kumari Selja, organised by Young FICCI Ladies Organisation in New Delhi. 
• Mohan Das Pai on 15 April resigned from Infosys and its board of directors, ending a 17-year association with the company. Mr. Pai is the second top executive in Infosys to leave the organisation in two years after Nandan Nilekani, one of its founders, quit to join the government. 
• National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) announced the appointment of Rajendra S. Pawar as the new chairman of its Executive Council for the year 2011-2012. Rajendra Pawar is the Chairman and co-founder of NIIT Technologies. NASSCOM also appointed Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Tata Consultancy Services, N. Chandrasekaran as the Vice-Chairman for the year 2011-12. Pawar succeeded Harsh Manglik (Chairman and Managing Director of Accenture), who was the Chairman for 2010-11. Pawar is also a member of the National Council on Skill Development, which is chaired by the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh. He has previously served on the Prime Minister's National Task force 
• Former Indian prime minister I K Gujral released his autobiography, Matters of Discretion: An Autobiography. 
• Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas, who was forced into exile after the 1973 military coup died on 25 April 2011 at the age of 93. His vast body of work includes his first poetry anthology The Misery of Man published in 1948, Against Death (1964), Dark (1977), Transtierro (1979), On lightning (1981) and From Water (2007). 
• Nawang Gombu, the first man to scale Mt. Everest twice died in Darjeeling early on 24 April 2011 at the age of 79. Nawang was the first person in the world to summit Mt Everest twice, the first in India to conquer Nanda Devi (24,645ft) and the youngest to climb to a height of 26000 feet. The 1953 expedition made him the youngest climbing Sherpa, at the age of 16.Nawang Gombu was awarded the Padma Bhusan in 1966, the Arjuna Award in 1965 and the Tenzing Norgay Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. Nawang Gombu had also received the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Medal. 
• Satya Sai Baba - one of India's most influential spiritual leaders expired on 24th April 2011 in his home town of Puttaparthi in Andhra Pradesh at the age of 85. He was on intermittent haemodialysis and on assisted respiration at his organisation funded by Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences at Puttaparthi. The Andhra Pradesh government has declared a three-day mourning and Anantpur will be closed on April 27, 2011. 
• Former Sony President Norio Ohga, who transformed the music industry with the development of the compact disc format died on 23 April 2011. 
• Timothy Roemer -United States Ambassador to India resigned on 28 April 2011. His resignation was cited as due to some personal considerations which made him to take the decision to go back to Washington. Roemer was nominated by US President, Barack Obama in May 2009. 
• K.Balachandar, Film Director, one of the influential filmmakers and trendsetters in Indian cinema, will receive the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for the year 2010, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry announced on 29th April’11. 
• Sujatha(58), who made waves in the south Indian film industry in the Seventies and Eighties, passed away in Chennai. The 58-year-old actor, who was undergoing treatment for a heart ailment, died of cardiac arrest. Known for restraint and subtlety in portrayal of varied emotions. Sujatha was introduced to the Tamil film industry by Director K. Balachander as the protagonist in “Aval Oru Thodarkathai.” The actor has performed in over 300 films in all four south Indian languages and Hindi. 
• Ajit Bhattacharjea(87)- one of the towering figures of Indian media was dead in New Delhi. Mr. Bhattacharjea is a leading figure of the right to information movement. Bhattacharjea was one of the founder members of the Guild and played a leading role in establishing it following the Emergency. In a career spanning 37 years, Bhattacharjea was the Editor of leading newspapers The Hindustan Times, The Times of India and Indian Express. After retirement, he held the post of Director, Press Institute of India. 
• Pratip chaudhuri was appointed as the chairman of State Bank of India, the country's largest bank. Chaudhuri, who is presently working as the deputy managing director in-charge of international banking. 
• Rangesh kona (Austin, Texas) - Austin based web engineer, a Telugu youth developed and released an application called U Twit More to web users which can bypass twitter 140 characters limit. U Twit More web application posts messages directly to Twitter. One can now post 1000 characters to twitter using UTwitMore application. 
• Jacob Mathew, Executive Editor of the Malayala Manorama Group of Publications, has unanimously been elected president of WAN-IFRA at its annual general meeting held in Dublin, Ireland. He is the first Indian and second Asian, after Seok Hyun Hong of Korea, to be elected to this office. WAN-IFRA, based in Paris and Darmstadt, Germany, is a global organization of newspaper editors and publishers, representing more than 18,000 publications, 15,000 online sites and over 3,000 companies in more than 120 countries. The World Association of Newspapers, founded in 1948, and IFRA, the research and service organisation of the news publishing industry, founded in 1962, merged in 2009 to form WAN-IFRA. Jacob Mathew is now a trustee of the Press Institute of India/Research Institute for Newspaper Development and is also on the Asia Board of the International Newspaper Marketing Association (INMA). 
• Dr. Baruch S. Blumberg (85) - renowned scientist, who won the 1976 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his discovery of the hepatitis B virus, has died in Philadelphia.