Many Indians have contributed to science and technology such as CV Raman who discovered the Raman effect. He also won a Nobel Award in Physics. However, some Indian geniuses did not get such awards despite discovering important things. One such person was G.N. Ramachandran, an Indian physicist known for his work, which led to his creation of the Ramachandran plot for understanding peptide structure.
Ramachandran was the first to propose a triple-helical model for collagen structure, which is the most abundant protein in connective tissue. He subsequently went on to make other major contributions to biology and physics. However, he couldn't win a Nobel Prize. This was because Nature, a science journal, reportedly did not accept Ramachandran's complete paper on collagen structure but only published a short letter.
Born in Kerala, Ramachandran completed his BSc honours in Physics from St Joseph's College, Tiruchirappalli in 1939. He later joined the Indian Institute of Science (IIS) Bangalore in 1942 in the Electrical Engineering Department. However, due to his interest in physics, he switched to the Department of Physics to complete his master's and doctoral thesis under the supervision of Nobel laureate Sir CV Raman. He subsequently received his D.Sc. degree in 1947.
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After completing his PhD, he worked as an assistant professor of physics at IIS Bangalore and then moved to Madras University as a professor and head of the Department of Physics. Ramachandran received the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award for Physics in India (1961) and the Fellowship of the Royal Society of London. His health gradually deteriorated after his wife Rajalakshmi's demise in 1998. Ramachandran passed away in 2001 at the age of 78.
