M. A. Viswamitra

Professor M. A. Viswamitra, distinguished crystallographer and structural biologist, died unexpectedly at Bangalore on 10 April 2001, at the age of 68. He died soon after speaking at a condolence meeting for Professor G. N. Ramachandran.

He started his research career in 1955 as a graduate student of Professor S. Rama­seshan at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He obtained his PhD degree in 1960 and joined the faculty of the Institute in 1963. He spent his entire career at the Institute except for his extended visits to Professor Dorothy Hodgkin's laboratory at Oxford in the sixties and to Professor Olga Kennard's laboratory at Cambridge in the seventies and the early eighties.

Viswamitra has been a versatile scientist. In the early years of his illustrious career he developed instrumentation for low-temperature and high-temperature crystallography. But, he is better known for his contributions to structural biology. The path-breaking structural studies carried out by him on nucleotides and oligonucleotides are internationally recognized at the highest level and have had great impact on the understanding of DNA structure, especially its sequence dependence. He made significant contributions to protein crystallography also during the last phase of his career. His work has been well recognized through several fellowships and awards.

Viswamitra has had a very positive influence particularly on Indian science. He was a splendid human being and generously helped and supported institutions and individuals. The crystallography and structural biology community has suffered a grievous loss in Viswamitra's death.