GN Ramachandran

GN Ramachandran ( Gopalasamudram Narayana Iyer Ramachandran ; born October 8, 1922 in Ernakulam , Kerala ; † April 7, 2001 in Chennai , Tamil Nadu ) was an Indian biophysicist . He made a decisive contribution to the understanding of protein structures through the Ramachandran diagram named after him and made many other contributions in biology and physics .

Life

Ramachandran was born in the city of Ernakulam in Kerala, India. He enrolled at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru as an electrical engineer, but shortly afterwards switched to the Department of Physics. There he did his doctorate under the Nobel Prize winner CV Raman , where he mainly dealt with X-ray crystallography .

Ramachandran spent two years (1947-1949) at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge and then came back to the Indian Institute of Science as an assistant professor. In 1952 he moved to the University of Madras , where he continued his work in X-ray crystallography as a full professor and where his interest was directed to the structure of biological macromolecules. In 1954, together with Gopinath Kartha, he proposed the triple-helix structure of collagen , which he had elucidated with the help of X-ray crystallography.

In 1962 he published his general considerations on the conformation of proteins , which are known today as the Ramachandran diagram , and have since been a tool in the elucidation of the structure of proteins.

In 1963 he was nominated by CV Raman for his research on the structure of collagen for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry , making him the second Indian ever to have been nominated for a Nobel Prize.

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

Ramachandran received u. a. the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award for Physics in India and was a member of the Royal Society in London. In 1970 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1999 he received the Ewald Prize of the International Union of Crystallography for his "extraordinary contributions to crystallography".

Web links

Literature by and about GN Ramachandran in the catalog of the German National Library

literature

C. Ramakrishnan: In Memoriam: Professor GN Ramachandram (1922-2001) . In: Protein Science: A Publication of the Protein Society . tape 10 , no. 8 , 2001, ISSN 0961-8368 , p. 1689–1691 , doi : 10.1002 / pro.101689 , PMID 11468366 , PMC 2374078 (free full text).
Easwara Subramanian: Obituary: GN Ramachandran . In: Nature Structural Biology . tape 8 , no. 6 , 2001, p. 489-491 , doi : 10.1038 / 88544 .
P. Balaram, S. Ramaseshan: GN Ramachandran . In: Current Science . tape 80 , no. 8 , 2001, p. 909-910 ( PDF - free full text).

Individual evidence

^ Rajinder Singh: CV Raman nominated GN Ramachandran for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry . In: Current Science . tape 111 , no. 10 , 2016, p. 1714 ( PDF - free full text).

personal data
SURNAME	Ramachandran, GN
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Ramachandran, Gopalasamudram Narayana Iyer (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Indian biophysicist
DATE OF BIRTH	October 8, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH	Ernakulam
DATE OF DEATH	April 7, 2001
Place of death	Chennai

[1] Rajinder Singh: CV Raman nominated GN Ramachandran for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry . In: Current Science . tape 111 , no. 10 , 2016, p. 1714 ( PDF - free full text).