Prof. M. R. N. Murthy

                                       Name : Murthy, Mathur Ramabhadra Shastry Narasimha 

                                                              E-mail  : mrn@mbu.iisc.ernet.in

                                                              Residential: 
                                                                             531 “BELADINGALU” 
                                                                             14th Main, Gokula I stage, I Phase
                                                                             Bangalore 560 054
                                                                             Tel: (080)2337-2981,
                                                                                    (080)2357-3380

Academic and Professional Qualifications

        Positions held

Adjunct professor at Purdue University, 1989-1992.

Elected to the Indian Academy of Sciences, 1992.

	Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar Prize, 1993.
	Elected to the Indian National Science Academy, 1996.
	Indian Science Platinum Jubilee Lecture, 1999.
	Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, 2001.
	Rustum Choksi award for excellence in Science, 2002.
	R.L. Kapur endowment lecture, Ramanujan Mathematical Society, 2003
	G. N. Ramachandran Commemoration award, 2003
	Fellow of the third world Academy of sciences, 2004
	Hari Om Ashram Trust Award, 2004
	Jagdish Chandra Bose Award for Life Sciences, 2005
	Astra-Zeneca distinguished Scientist award for the popularization of Science, 2005

Biographical sketch

M.R.N. Murthy was born in the small village of Mathur situated in the Shimoga District of Karnataka State. The primary education of Murthy was at the Government school of his native village. He obtained higher secondary education in the nearby town of Shimoga, as there was no higher secondary school in the village. Murthy belongs to one of the initial generations to leave the village for higher education. Because of this background, Murthy has intimate knowledge of Indian rural traditions and customs. After his Pre-University education at Shimoga, Murthy joined the Central College in Bangalore as an honours student of physics. Following this, he joined the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (the present Chennai) to study masters course in physics. 

After obtaining masters degree, he joined the organic chemistry Department of the prestigious Indian Institute of Science for his doctoral studies under the guidance of Professor K. Venkatesan, a well-known Indian crystallographer. Murthy’s doctoral work was partially concerned with conformation of peptides. Murthy determined some peptide structures and carried out molecular mechanics calculation on model peptides to understand their conformational properties. These studies kindled Murthy’s interest in macromolecular crystallography. Therefore, after obtaining his doctorate degree from the Indian Institute of Science, he joined Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA as a post doctoral fellow to work on structure determination of glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase and catalase under the leadership of Professor M.G. Rossmann, a world renowned crystallographer. 

After spending 4 years, which gave the Murthy the experience and confidence to initiate his own studies in structural biology, he returned to the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. During the initial year, he was associated with the Department of Physics following which he joined the Molecular Biophysics Unit of the same Institute, where he has remained since. He initiated structural studies on isometric viruses in India at a time when research on macromolecular protein crystallography was being initiated for the first time in the country by Professor M. Vijayan at the Molecular Biophysics Unit of IISc and Dr. K.K. Kannan at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Bombay. At that time, there were no experimental facilities for carrying out macromolecular structural work at the Indian Institute of Science, or anywhere else in the country. Murthy, along with Professor M. Vijayan, established X-ray diffraction facility at the Molecular Biophysics Unit, which served as the national nucleus for crystallographic work in the initial decade of such structural work in India. Also in the 1980s and early 1990s, computational facilities available at the Indian Institute of Science were inadequate for even protein crystallography and successful execution of structural studies of viruses was unimaginable. Murthy developed methods for the structure determination and analyses of viruses that were computationally efficient and less demanding of resources, writing several programs and adopting a number of other available programs to smaller computing machines. His success in these endeavors is reflected in the successful conclusion of several structural studies on virus particles, which are the only such studies performed in the twentieth century in the third world.   

      Murthy has shown deep commitment to Science education in the state of Karnataka of India. This interest has been facilitated by his intimate knowledge of the state language, Kannada and his ability to express ideas of Science with ease. He has actively participated in the activities of Karnataka Rajya Vigyana Parishad (an autonomous organization with the goal of promoting science education), Bangalore Association for Science Education (functioning from the Nehru Planetarium, Bangalore), extension lecture program of the Indian Institute of Science, supported by the University Grants Commission, New Delhi and Karnataka State Council for Science and Technology. He frequently writes articles on scientific ideas and discoveries in the local language. Kannada Pusthaka Pradhikara (a publishing body of the Karnataka Government) has published a popular book on Biotechnology written by him in Kannada.

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