Bell Labs: Life in the Crown Jewel

Bell Labs has been called the "crown jewel" of AT&T. Forced by the marketplace, competition, and economic conditions, the prestigious research lab is in the midst of radical change. Gehani, who was research vice president for communications software research when he left Bell Labs after 23 years, chronicles the changes, from the breakup of AT&T through the rise and fall of Lucent, Bell Labs' parent organization. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Narain Gehani, a world-renowned expert in Web technologies, software, and databases is the author of many computer books including best selling books on UNIX typesetting and C. Narain was at Bell Labs for twenty three years from 1978 to 2001 where his last position was that of Research Vice President, Communications Software Research.

From 6/96 to 5/98, Narain was also the President of Lucent’s Maps On Us, a website co-founded by him. Narain led and managed Maps On Us from conception and commercial deployment until its sale to SwitchBoard in 5/98.

Narain got his PhD in computer science from Cornell University in 1975. He taught computer science for 3 years at SUNY/Buffalo and then joined Bell Labs in 1978. He has served on numerous program conference committees and was an ACM National Lecturer for several years. Narain has co-authored several pioneering software systems including the Ode object database, Concurrent C/C++ parallel programming language, and the Stair9 Web-based customer care system. Narain holds several patents, and has published many papers in computer science.