G. N. Ramachandran

Gopalasamudram Narayana Iyer Ramachandran, or G.N. Ramachandran, (8 October 1922 – 7 April 2001) was a prominent Indian scientist, best 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 also made other major contributions in biology and physics.

Education

Ramachandran was born in the town of Ernakulam, Kerala, India in the village of Moses De Khan in a Tamil Family. Gopalasamudram, the native place of his forefathers, is a village in the old Tirunelveli District of Madras Presidency. He joined the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 1942 in the Electrical Engineering Department. Quickly realizing 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 C. V. Raman. In 1942, he received a master's degree in physics from Madras University with his thesis submmited from Bangalore (he did not attend any Madras college at that time). He subsequently received his D.Sc. degree in 1947. 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...
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