The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries saw a generation of Indian public figures who moved fluidly between professional, literary, and philanthropic worlds. Sudha Murthy, born on 19 August 1950 in Shiggaon, India, is one of them — a writer, computer scientist, social worker, and philanthropist whose work spans several distinct fields.

Murthy was educated at KLE Technological University, B.V.B. College of Engineering and Technology, Karnatak University, and the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru. She writes in both English and Kannada, and her work includes fiction as well as science fiction. One of her notable works is How I Taught My Grandmother to Read. Beyond her writing, she serves as the Founder-Chairperson of the Infosys Foundation, a non-profit charitable organization, and is married to N. R. Narayana Murthy. Her philanthropic work has run alongside her literary output rather than replacing it, giving her public profile an unusually broad footprint across Indian civic life.

That breadth has been recognized at the highest levels of the Indian state. Murthy received the Padma Shri for her contributions to social work, and later the Padma Bhushan, one of India's most distinguished civilian honors. On 8 March 2024, she was nominated as a Member of Parliament to the Rajya Sabha, India's upper house, a formal acknowledgment of her standing as a public figure whose contributions extend well beyond any single domain.