Govindarajan Padmanabhan

Govindarajan Padmanaban

Born 20 March 1938 (1938-03-20) (age 73)
Bangalore, India
Residence India
Nationality Indian
Fields Biochemistry
Institutions Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru
St Mary's Hospital Medical School, London (1969–1970) London
University of Chicago, Chicago (1973-1986)
Alma mater Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru
Indian Agricultural Research Institute,New Delhi
Presidency College, Chennai
Doctoral advisor P. S. Sarma
Known for Heme biology, Drug targets in malaria parasites
Notable awards Padma Bhushan (2003)
Padma Shri (1991)
Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize (1983)

Govindarajan Padmanaban (Malayalam:ഗോവിന്ദരാജന്‍ പദ്മനാഭന്‍) (born 20 March 1938) is a renowned biochemist and a pioneer in Indian biotechnology. He was former director of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and presently serving as honorary professor in the department of biochemistry, IISc.

Contents

Early life and education

Padmanaban was brought up in a family of engineers. His parents belonged to Tanjore district of Tamil Nadu but had settled in Bangalore. After completing his schooling in Bangalore, he joined an Engineering College. However, he found engineering uninteresting, and he joined the Presidency College in Chennai to complete a bachelors degree in chemistry. He completed his masters in Soil Chemistry at Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi and Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the Indian Institute of science IISc, Bangalore in 1966.

Research

In the early years of his research, he primarily worked in the transcriptional regulation of Eukaryotic genes in the liver. He was interested in elucidating the multifaceted role of heme in cellular processes. His group discovered the heme-biosynthetic pathway in the malarial parasite and showed it to be a drug target. He has also been interested in the area of vaccine development. His team was successful in showing the antimalarial property of Curcumin and its efficacy in combination therapy in 2004.[1]

Awards

Preceded by
C.N.R.Rao		 Director, Indian Institute of Science
1994–1998		 Succeeded by
Govardhan Mehta

References

  1. ^ "Curcumin for malaria therapy". Sciencedirect. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WBK-4DVB9ST-3&_user=123215&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000010181&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=123215&md5=bceac644f64edc850256ebea3e5b3460. 
http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/aug102007/281.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=(Padmanaban+G[Author])
http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v9/n8/full/nm0803-985.html

Toppur Seethapathy Sadasivan (1960) • M.S. Swaminathan (1961) • B.K.Bachhawat (1962) • Jagannath Ganguly (1963} • D.S. Athwal (1964) • Chirayathumadom Venkatachalier Subramanian (1965) • Hari Krishan Jain & Neelamraju Ganga Prasada Rao (1966) • Tathamangam Ananthanarayanan Venkitasubramanian (1968) • Madhu Sudan Kanungo & Narayana Balakrishnan Nair (1971) • Birendra Bijoy Biswas&Satish Chandra Maheshwari (1972) • Bhyravabhotla Radhakrishna Murty (1973) • J. Barnabas (1974) • Obaid Siddiqi (1975) • Guru Prakash Gutta (1976) • T.C.A. Kumar (1977) • A.N. Bhaduri (1979) • Asis Datta & Jamuna Sharan Singh (1980) • Prafullachandra Vishnu Sane (1981) • Sunil Kumar Podder (1982) • Govindarajan Padmanabhan (1983) • Thavamani Jegajothivel Pandian (1984) • Chhitar Mal Gupta (1985) • M. Gadgil (1986) • B. Bhattacharyya (1988) • M.R.S. Rao (1988) • Subhash Chandra Lakhotia (1989) • Samir K. Brahmachari (1990) • Kuppamuthu Dharmalingam (1992) • Raghavendra Gadagkar (1993) • A. Bhattacharya (1994) • Seyed Ehtesham Hasnain & Kallappa Muniyappa (1995) • Ghanshyam Swarup (1996) • Jayaraman Gowrishankar (1997) • Krishnaswami VijayRaghavan (1998) • Dinakar Mashnu Salunke (2000) • Raghavan Varadarajan & Amitabha Chattopadhyay (2002) • Satyajit Mayor (2003) • Gopal Chandra Kundu & Ramesh Venkata Sonti (2004) • Tapas K. Kundu & Shekhar C. Mande (2005) • Vinod Bhakuni & Rajesh Sudhir Gokhale (2006) • Upinder Singh Bhalla & Narayanaswamy Srinivasan (2007) • Gajendra Pal Singh Raghava & L.S. Shashidhara (2008) • Amitabh Joshi & Bhaskar Saha (2009) • Sanjeev Galande & Shubha Tole (2010) Amit Prakash Sharma & Rajan Sankaranarayanan (2011)
All the branches
Biological Science | Chemical Science | Engineering Science | Mathematical Science | Medical Science | Physical Science | Earth, Atmosphere, Ocean & Planetary Sciences