“The gentleman is always effacing; walking about the Campus, he is not so visible, but you feel he must be up to something. His eyes, a grey/green color, intriguing colors, he looks like a professor, he is so quiet, you can pass him on the way, without paying attention to him until someone tells you of the number of books and articles he has published”
T his is a description of Raouf Shawky Rostom, Professor of Photogrammetry, and father of the Department of Geospatial and Space Technology at the University of Nairobi. Born in 1938, in Cairo, Egypt and brought up as an Egyptian Coptic Orthodox, Raouf , now 74 years old was educated in Cairo and joined the Faculty of Engineering at Cairo University, graduating in 1959 with a B.sc degree in Civil Engineering. Because he was at the head of his group, the faculty decided that he should get a government scholarship to study for a Ph.D in the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was the first choice of the then president Nassir, who during a visit to Moscow University’s department of photography, saw an opportune time for a student from Egypt to pursue that field as the country did not have enough specialists. Another circumstance for the choice of Moscow was that 1956 was the year that Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, therefore, Israel, France and England attacked Egypt, Moscow was the only major country to assist Egypt hence the cementing of a friendship.
