Rank Nazeer Ahmed

Nazeer Ahmed was born in Tumkur, India in 1939. At the age of 13 he stood first in the Mysore State public examination of 1952 and awarded the Maharaja of Mysore gold medal. He has been known as “Rank Nazeer Ahmed” due to the consistency with which he ranked first in state and interstate exams. He entered the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1961 as an Institute Scholar as well as a Tata Scholar. He was awarded MS and AeE degrees from Caltech. He worked in Huntsville, Alabama on the Saturn, Apollo and Lunar Land Rover Projects at the Marshall Space Flight Center in 1964–65. He obtained a PhD in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Cornell University in 1967. Under Peter Drucker he studied management at New York University. He then obtained an MBA from Rider University, New Jersey.

In 1977, he was elected a member of the Karnataka Legislative Assembly from the 57th constituency but resigned a year later. In 1988 he was elected a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, 42nd Congressional District in California. In 1992 he was a candidate for US Congress, 46 CA Congressional District.