Rajeev Motwani, the Stanford University computer science professor who mentored the likes of Google's co-founder Sergi Brin, died of a freak accident at a backyard swimming pool at his Bay area home in Atherton, California, on Friday.

Motwani, 47, who did not knew how to swim, apparently drowned accidentally while trying to learn swimming or might have slipped and fallen to the pool, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

Silicon Valley tech community thronged the place as soon as news of Motwani's death spread through emails, blogs, Facebook entries, and Twitter feeds.

Among the first to pay tribute was Google's Sergei Brin, who along with his co-founder Larry Page, was Motwani's student in the graduate school at Stanford. They had also worked closely with him as they founded Google.

In fact, according to TechCrunch founder Arrington, it was a 1998 paper called `'What Can You Do With A Web In Your Pocket' by Brin, Motwani, Page and Terry Winograd that became the basis for Google.

They said in the paper they intended to ''take advantage of the link structure of the web to produce a global 'importance' ranking of every web page.''

Brin, in his blog entry, recalled Motwani's ''big role in my research, education, and professional development.''

"In addition to being a brilliant computer scientist, Rajeev was a very kind and amicable person and his door was always open. No matter what was going on with my life or work, I could always stop by his office for an interesting conversation and a friendly smile,'' he wrote.

'''Today, whenever you use a piece of technology, there is a good chance a little bit of Rajeev Motwani is behind it,'' Brin added.
Motwani is survived by his wife Asha Jadeja and daughters Naitri and Anya.

Born in Jammu, Rajeev Motwani grew up in Delhi and graduated from IIT Kanpur. He moved to the University of California (Berkeley), US, in the mid-1980s, where he earned his doctorate, before moving to Stanford University.

As a Stanford professor, he also served as the director of graduate studies for the computer science department and founded the Mining Data at Stanford project (MIDAS), positions from which he mentored many of the Silicon Valley start-ups.

Silicon Valley techies such as TechCrunch's Michael Arrington as also Google's Brin and Page credit Motwani with having a profound impact on the IT world.