Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya

Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya (1861-1962) was an Indian civil engineer, administrator and statesman who served as the nineteenth Dewan of Mysore from 1912 to 1918. As an engineer he designed and patented a system of automatic weir water floodgates, first installed at the Khadakvasla Dam near Pune in 1903, which raised a reservoir storage capacity without compromising the safety of the dam, and the same system was later installed at the Krishna Raja Sagara Dam in Mysore and the Tigra Dam in Gwalior. During his time as Dewan he founded institutions including the Mysore Iron and Steel Works, Bangalore Polytechnic and the Government Engineering College, now the University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering, and commissioned new railway lines while encouraging private industrial investment. India awarded him the Bharat Ratna, its highest civilian honor, in 1955, and his birthday, September 15, is observed as Engineer Day in India, Sri Lanka and Tanzania. He lived to be 100 years old. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/