Subramania Ranganathan

Subramania Ranganathan (1934–2016), popularly known as Ranga, was an Indian bioorganic chemist and professor and head of the department of chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. He was known for his studies on synthetic and mechanistic organic chemistry and was an elected fellow Indian National Science Academy, National Academy of Sciences, India and the Indian Academy of Sciences The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 1977, for his contributions to chemical sciences. Ranganathan, born on 2 February 1934 in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, graduated in chemistry from Madras University and continued there to complete his master's degree in 1957. Before moving to US to pursue his doctoral studies on a Sloan Kettering Foundation fellowship, he worked at the biochemistry department of the Central Leather Research Institute for a short while. In the US, he enrolled at Ohio State University at Harold Shechter's laboratory and secured a PhD in 1962. He moved to the laboratory of Robert Burns Woodward, the 1965 Nobel laureate, at Harvard University for his post- doctoral studies and in 1964, he shifted to Woodward Research Institute, Basel to complete the studies in 1964. On his return to India in 1966, he joined IIT Kanpur where he spent his entire official academic career, holding positions of a professor, head of the department and dean, before superannuating in 1994. Post-retirement, he served as an INSA senior scientist, first at National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology and later at the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT), both the facilities were earlier known as Regional Research Laboratories. Ranganathan was holding the position of an honorary position at IICT when he died on 8 January 2016, at the age of 81, survived by his son, Anand.