Divyang Pandit

Divyang (Dave) Suresh Pandit was born in Visnagar, Gujarat, India. He earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering at Gujarat University and was employed in Mumbai before a childhood friend who was already enrolled at Michigan Tech contacted him about an opportunity to get his master’s degree.

"I had never heard of Michigan Tech or seen a flake of snow," he said. Pandit’s sister was a doctor in Detroit, but that’s all he knew about Michigan or America. Still he enrolled and came to Houghton.

Pandit credits his connection with other students from India for helping him survive the Copper Country winters. He earned a master's in mechanical engineering from Michigan Tech in 1969.

"My advisor, Ward Frea, wanted me to stay and do a PhD, but I said I would die with the snow if I stayed."

As he graduated, Pandit had three job offers from different divisions of General Motors. He started with Detroit Diesel, and ended up working his entire 40-year career for GM, retiring as Global Collaboration Manager for Information Technology.

"Michigan Tech set a high standard," he said. "And my degree opened a lot of doors. At that time, GM was hiring more Michigan Tech graduates than its own GM Institute."

In his extensive travel for GM, Pandit noticed Sudoku puzzles in newspapers from every country. With his academic and professional success, he assumed he could solve the puzzles easily. "After two or three months of trying, I kind of gave up. I was looking for a pattern and couldn't find one."

Visiting his brother and mother in Houston, he noticed that someone had already filled out the day’s newspaper Sudoku. It was his mother.

"She taught me in 10 minutes how to solve the puzzles, saying it was like a Garba—an Indian secular dance where you clap around in a circle. Similar to a square dance in America."

Pandit went on to write a book, Sudoku Puzzles "Guru" in 2013, which gives the methods and examples of how to solve Sudokus. "Because I’m an engineer, I wrote it like an engineering manual."

Pandit, who is retired and living in Plymouth, Michigan, has given classes all over the U.S. and even in India on how to solve Sudoku puzzles.

August 2024