Graphic by Aathira Perinchery.

In a chaotic world spinning towards an 'interesting' future, many are self-absorbed in deciphering ways to ensure that our personal endeavors and ambitions meet with success. Intellectual depth and scholarship can give way to Lemming-like dynamics where the herd decides the direction for our personal and institutional trajectories. Intellectual stampedes are certainly not required behaviour, yet few refuse to participate and fewer still strike new paths. There are a daring few who define new intellectual quests, and whose courage and leadership create a culture, the nurturing of which makes us all feel special. Today, we celebrate Obaid Siddiqi whose foresight, determination and quiet courage has transformed research in molecular biology in India at least twice and whose scientific successes span many fields of biology. While establishing institutional excellence and instilling an iconoclastic culture of independence and freethinking, these pioneering efforts have led to wide-appreciation, both of the beauty and value of Obaid's science and of his leadership in institution-building, as models to emulate.

Obaid's research started in India, first in plant embryology and later in wheat genetics. A hailstorm ruined his experimental-plot, leading Obaid to hatch a new one and to the Indian Council of Agricultural Research to lose a future star.

Interested by the possibilities of doing genetics at a slightly faster pace than what wheat allowed, Obaid wrote to Guido Pontecorvo, Professor of Genetics at Glasgow. Pontecorvo asked him to come to Glasgow for an interview that would decide if he would be admitted to his lab or not. Reaching Glasgow, in 1958, Obaid was taken to the lab to get started. Puzzled, he asked when the interview would be held. Pontecorvo replied that Obaid had passed the test by coming to Glasgow: He just wanted to see that the applicant was interested enough to come all the way from India despite the possibility of being turned down. At Glasgow, as a PhD student, Obaid mapped the fine structure of the paba gene of Aspergillus by examining intragenic recombination and suggesting that this could be polarized. This work is a classic, with Obaid as the sole-author on the papers.

In 1961, Obaid joined Alan Garen at the University of Pennsylvania. In elegant and brilliant experiments, Siddiqi and Garen discovered the suppressors of "nonsense" mutations. This work stimulated research on conditional mutations of bacteria and viruses and was directly important to the discovery of "nonsense" codons, the stop signals in the genetic code. At this time phage and bacterial genetics was at its zenith and the new term Molecular Biology was coined. Obaid was a regular at meetings at Cold Spring Harbor and elsewhere. The young stars of that period, Obaid amongst them, were to become the who's-who of molecular biology in the next decades: Obaid being a recognized comrade, brought them to India later on during his next avatars, thereby transmitting the culture of scientific excellence more effectively and linking young Indian scientists to the best the world-over.

While in Philadelphia, Obaid met the physicist Leo Szilard, one of the famous 'Five Martians of Science'. Szilard recommended Obaid to Homi Bhabha at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research where Obaid joined in 1962 to set up the Molecular Biology Unit. Biochemists of that time did not like the term 'Molecular Biology.' "What other kind is there?", one famously is said to have asked. Yet, using genetics to infer the molecular nature of inheritance and of cellular function was new, elegant, thrilling and informative. Its effective practitioners could be forgiven their deserved pride and self-confidence. At the Molecular Biology Unit at TIFR, Obaid established a small but strong bacterial genetics group. Their work de-linking DNA transfer, DNA replication and recombination in bacteria was widely recognized and is textbook material. Under Obaid's influence Pabitra Maitra introduced yeast genetics to the Tata Institute and he and Zita Lobo become leaders in the dissection of the genetics of sugar metabolism.

Just when the ease of bacterial genetics could have become addictive, Obaid worked with his friend Seymour Benzer in the 1970s to change his scientific directions again, into using genetics to understand the nervous system and behaviour. Here too, Obaid struck gold with his study of temperature-sensitive paralytic mutants in Drosophila: Work which has been pioneering in our understanding of how nerve signals are generated and transmitted.

Starting with his student Veronica Rodrigues in 1976 and till today in a still bustling-lab, Obaid has pioneered yet again, this time studying the chemical senses of Drosophila. Obaid and his team have identified genes whose mutations block olfactory or gustatory responses. Some of these affect peripheral transduction processes, specifically the electrical activity of chemoreceptors while others interfere with olfactory network development. While Obaid's work has led to an improved understanding of how olfactory information is encoded in the brain of the fly, his study of chemosensory genetics has also inspired others to address this challenging field. They, all leaders in neuroscience today, admire him for showing the way and continue to be inspired by him.

In 1984, I was standing next to the geneticist E. B. Lewis at Caltech, doing what men in a row, looking blankly ahead, usually do. "Are you from India?" asked Ed. "From the Tata?" "Do you know Siddiqi?" "How does one person do such wonderful work in Aspergillus, Coli, Drosophila Physiology and behaviour, I can barely deal with one complex locus in a lifetime?" I didn't have an answer to the last question. I had not known too many scientists then and I did not realize that Obaid was unusual. This was an eye-opener. "The Tata (as TIFR is often called outside India) is a great place", continued Ed, "We had Babu from there and he's pretty good, and if they've hired you, you should jump at it". That chance meeting, and each of several others with the best (in other locations), showed how Obaid's name made you good friends. And, every meeting came with praise for the Molecular Biology Unit and TIFR. As students, we seemed to have taken the best courses conducted by the best as 'normal': Going out of the country we realized how privileged we were and what a wonderful culture and environment the Molecular Biology Unit (now the DBS) and the Tata Institute has given us. A culture of questioning and one which defines purpose in science by the quality of the question and its answer and not by the volume of herd-opinion. That this culture has been constantly passed on and lives in Colaba today is testimony to the effectiveness of Obaid and others such as him.

With the same culture that combines ease of interaction with rigour in science, Obaid developed a vision for- and founded-the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS). While we celebrate 20 years of NCBS's formal existence, its birth took place much earlier. As Obaid's vision crystalized to reality, one theme stood out at every stage: The refusal to be hurried, compromising on quality, or in our core-culture, in the interests of speed. Well-meaning bureaucrats and friends offered advice, or sometimes insisted, that something counter to Obaid's understanding of good sense be done. Obaid would work hard to persuade them to change their view. If they did not, he would simply wait for their successor, hopefully of a different persuasion, to take office: "They will all retire," he famously said, somehow implying that he would himself never age or retire. And, that, is indeed true! We look forward to celebrating this year and the next and many more years with Obaid: Your scientific career has spanned many revolutions in biology and your institution-building has created, and continues to create, new adventurers. Many Happy Returns of the Day to you! And, the same to NCBS, whose 20 years we also celebrate.

Add your comments and reminiscences of Obaid and NCBS below.

You can also record your appreciation along with photographs here, on the NCBS FaceBook Page. If you have relevant photographs that you would like to share, please send it to ncbstalk at gmail dot com, and it will be uploaded on the NCBS news site.

We will compile these into a book for all to enjoy!

K. VijayRaghavan, on behalf of the NCBS-TIFR community: For Obaid and for all of Obaid’s friends and family.