G.N. Ramachandran

Scientist

G.N. Ramachandran

Born: 8 October 1922

Died: 7 April 2001

Gopalasamudram Narayanan Ramachandran or G.N. Ramachandran was an Indian physicist who was known for his work that led to his creation of the Ramachandran plot for understanding peptide structure.
He was the first to propose a triple-helical model for the structure of collagen.
He subsequently went on to make other major contributions in biology and physics.
He was awarded the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship in 1968 for research on Protein and Polypeptide Conformation, he was one of its first recipients.
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.
Ramachandran and A.V. Lakshminarayanan developed convolution-back projection algorithms which greatly improved the quality and practicality of results obtainable by x-ray tomography.
In 1981, Ramachandran became a founding member of the World Cultural Council.
Notable awards that Ramachandran received include the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award for Physics in India (1961) 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’.
He was nominated for the Nobel Prize as well for his fundamental contributions in protein structure and function.
Each year, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) awards the “G N Ramachandran Gold Medal for Excellence in Biological Sciences & Technology” in his memory for work in Biological Sciences & Technology.