Nripendra Nath Biswas obtained his DIISc (1952) and AIISc (1954) from Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore and PhD (1960) from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur. His areas of specialization were electrical communication engineering, computer science and engineering. He was a Visiting Professor / Scientist at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill; at Syracuse, Southwestern Louisiana; and at Stanford Universities, USA; Faculty of Electronics and Communication Engineering, University of Roorkee (1955-67); Professor, Electrical Engineering, St. Louis University, USA (1967-70); Professor, Electrical Communication Engineering and Computer Science (1970-88); and CSIR Emeritus Professor, Department of Electrical Communication Engineering all at IISc, Bangalore (1989-92).

Academic and Research Achievements: Biswas made valuable contributions to: (i) minimization of Boolean functions, (ii) minimization of incompletely specified sequential machines, (iii) microprogramming, (iv) design testability and folding of programmable logic arrays, (v) dynamic (reconfigurable) architecture, and (vi) interconnection networks. He was engaged in extending the switching theoretic techniques in the areas of multilevel logic synthesis, and parallel and distributed computing. He published seven books; three in the areas of telegraphy, telephony and carrier communication; two in programming languages; and two in logic design and switching theory. Notable among these are: Principles of Telegraphy and Logic Design Theory (Prentice-Hall, 1993).

Other Contributions: Biswas was an Editor of Journal of Electron Test Theory and Application.

Awards and Honours: Biswas was a recipient of Khosla Research Award of University of Roorkee (1961). He was a Senior Member, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (USA).