Adam Osborne

Osborne was born to British parents in Bangkok, Thailand on 6 March 1939. His father, Arthur Osborne, was a teacher of eastern religion and philosophy and a lecturer in English at Chulalongkorn University. All members of the family were fluent in the Tamil language. He spent World War II in Tiruvannamalai, in southern India, with his mother. There they were frequent visitors to Sri Ramana Maharshi's Ashram He attended Presentation Convent School in Kodaikanal until Class 6. In 1950, the Osborne family moved back to England. From the age of 11, he was educated at a Catholic boarding school in Warwickshire but from 1954 to 1957 was a pupil at the grammar school Leamington College for Boys, where he played chess. He graduated with a degree in chemical engineering from the University of Birmingham in 1961, and received his PhD from the University of Delaware in 1968. It was while living in the United States that he learned to write computer code. He obtained a position as a chemical engineer with Shell Oil, in California, but was dismissed.

Osborne was a member of Mensa. He married – and divorced – twice: in the mid-1960s to Cynthia Geddes an American, and later to Barbara Burdick (Zelnick). Osborne had three children. Both former wives and all his children survived him.

In 1992, Osborne returned to India in declining health, suffering from a brain disorder that triggered frequent minor strokes. He died in his sleep on 18 March 2003, in Kodaikanal, India, aged 64.