JACK L SQUIER A

Late professor emeritus, College of Architecture, Art and Planning, Cornell University

I first met Ratan Tata in the early 1960s when he enrolled in a sculpture class I taught to architecture students at Cornell. The class was small and each student had to design and execute his own sculpture. During rather wide-ranging discussions and critiques of his work, I recognised in Ratan an unusually curious mind and a level of industry rarely found in an undergraduate.

Over the years I have followed Ratan’s remarkable career through press accounts and, from time to time, through correspondence. We shared an interest in Jaguar cars; Tata now owns the company and Ratan is involved closely with the design and engineering of Jaguars.

Ratan has, generously, given sizeable endowments to Cornell for scholarships that will allow many Indian students to study agriculture and other disciplines from now on. This is a wonderful gift for both future students and the university.

It comes as hardly a surprise, to those of us who have known Ratan and followed his amazing career, that he has succeeded so spectacularly in business as well as in philanthropy. One is tempted to send condolences to his successors, for they will be called upon now to fill a vacancy that may well require the best efforts of several men.