Gopalasamudram Narayana Iyer Ramachandran

Gopalasamudram Narayana Iyer Ramachandran (8 October, 1922 - 7 April, 2001) is widely acknowledged as one of the most important Indian scientists of the 20th century, best known for his work that led to his creation of the Ramachandran plot for understanding peptide structure. He also made other major contributions in biology and physics.

Birth and education

Ramachandran was born in the town of Ernakulam, Kerala, India. He joined Indian Institute of Science [http://www.iisc.ernet.in] , Bangalore in 1942 in the Electrical Engineering Department. Quickly realizing his interest in physics, he switched to Department of Physics [http://www.physics.iisc.ernet.in/] to complete his master's and doctoral thesis under the supervision of Nobel laureate Sir C. V. Raman [http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1930/raman-bio.html] . In 1942 he received a master's degree in physics from Madras University and received
D.Sc. in 1947 [http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/apr252001/909.pdf] . Here he mostly studied crystal physics and crystal optics. During his studies he created an X-ray focusing mirror for the X-ray Microscope. The resulting field of crystal topography is used extensively in studiesinvolving crystal growth and solid-state reactivity.

Ramachandran then spent two years (1947–1949) at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, where he earned his
Ph.D. for 'studies on X-ray diffuse scattering and its application to determination of elastic constants'.

Research

After completing his Ph.D, returned to Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India in 1949 as an assistant professor of physics. In 1952 he moved to Madras University as a professor and head, Department of Physics where he continued his work on crystal physics. But his interest shifted to the structure of biological macromolecules. Using X-ray diffraction Ramachandran along with Gopinath Kartha proposed and published the triple helical structure of collagen in 1954.

Wanting to tackle problems at a more fundamental level, Ramachandran decided to use this information to examine the various
polypeptide conformations then known and also to develop a good 'yardstick' that could be used for examining and assessing any structure in general, but peptides in particular. The result which emerged from these calculations in 1962,- now commonly known as the Ramachandran plot - was published in the Journal of Molecular Biologyin 1963 and has become an essential tool in the field of protein conformation. When it was first calculated, crystal structures had barely been obtained for any protein.From the mid 1960s onward Ramachandran studied many topics relating to the conformation of peptides includingtypes of β-turns, conformation of prolyl residues, cis-peptide units, occurrence and need for non-planarity of the peptides, NMR coupling constants, peptides containing L and D residues and many others.

Ramachandran can be credited for bringing together into the one field of molecular biophysics the then disparate fields of X-ray crystallography, peptide synthesis, NMR and other optical studies, and physico-chemical experimentation.

In 1970 he founded the Molecular Biophysics Unit at the Indian Institute of Science which was later known as the Centre of Advanced Study in Biophysics and Crystallography.

Ramachandran and A.V. Lakshminarayana developed convolution-backprojection algorithms which greatly improved the quality and practicality of results obtainable by x-ray tomography. Compared to previously used methods, their algorithms considerably reduced computer processing time for image reconstruction, as well as providing more numerically accurate images. As a result, commercial manufacturers of x-ray tomographic scanners started building systems capable of reconstructing high resolution images that were almost photographically perfect. In 1971, they published their research in a paper (“Three dimensional reconstructions from radiographs and electron micrographs: Application of convolution instead of Fourier Transforms,” Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., vol. 68, pp. 2236-2240, 1971).

Notable awards that Ramachandran received include the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award for Physics in India and the Fellowship of the Royal Society of London. In 1999 the International Union of Crystallography honored him with the Ewald Prize for his 'outstanding contributions to crystallography'.

Later years

During the last few years of his life he suffered a stroke and was affected by Parkinson's disease. Ramachandran died in 2001 at the age of 78.

External links

* [http://www.proteinscience.org/cgi/content/full/10/8/1689 In Memoriam: Professor G.N. Ramachandram (1922–2001)] in Protein Science
* [http://www.iucr.org/cww-top/his.obit_Ramachandran.pdf Article in Nature Structural Biology, V.8, issue 6, pages 489-491, June 2001]
* [http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/apr252001/909.pdf Editorial on G. N. Ramachandran, Current Science, Vol. 80, Issue 8, Pages 908-910]
* [http://www.vigyanprasar.gov.in/scientists/GNRamachandran%20.htm G. N. Ramachandran - A Jewel in the Crown of the Indian Science]