K.S. Krishnan (b.19-6-1946), Professor Emeritus at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) passed away on 24th May 2014.

Professor K.S. Krishnan, friend and inspiration to generations of students and youthful scientists, passed away following a sudden heart attack on Saturday 24 May 2014 at his home in Bangalore. He is survived by his wife, Chandra, and his sons, Karthik and Anand.

Krishnan was born in Palakkad in 1946 and studied in the Government College at Palakkad before he joined Bhabha Atomic Research Centre Training School, Trombay. After serving as a scientific officer at BARC, Department of Atomic Energy, he obtained his Ph.D. in Bio-Physics from Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore in 1975. He then joined the Molecular Biology Unit at the Tata Institute of Fundamental research (TIFR) in 1977, after a short post-doctoral stint at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA.  He remained at the Molecular Biology Unit until 2003, when he moved to Bangalore to the National Centre for Biological Science, NCBS, where he continued his research as Professor Emeritus even after his retirement from TIFR in 2008. 

Krishnan was forever young in his enthusiasm and enjoyment of the marvels of the living world. He managed to effortlessly bridge the simple joy of building devices, watching fruit flies, snails and wasps about their daily business, with rigorous science to understand molecular mechanisms of the natural world.  He was an inspiration for both his collaborators and friends, alike, with his truly original brand of science. Krishnan came to the IISc to work in the Molecular Biophysics Unit just founded by the legendary GN Ramachandran. Though nominally co-guided by KRK Easwaran with whom he was supposed to build an NMR machine, Krishnan formed an immediate personal and intellectual partnership with fresh young assistant professor, P Balaram (currently Director at IISc), with whom he chose to do most of his graduate work, studying the biophysical properties of biological membranes. Krishnan and Balaram were so close in age that it was not easy for visitors to tell who was the mentor and who the student. Then followed a short but productive postdoctoral stint with John Brandts at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he developed very sensitive devices to study the thermodynamics of proteins and membranes. He then joined the Molecular Biology Unit at TIFR, Mumbai founded by Professor Obaid Siddiqi, and thus began a distinguished career in neuroscience and fly neurogenetics.  

To the versatile genetic model system, the fruit fly, he added biochemistry biophysics and cell biology, However, his first major contribution to Neurogenetics was with the late Howard Nash in the NIH, Bethesda, where Krishnan adapted a long tubular apparatus named the "inebriometer," to a form that could be used to fractionate Drosophila mutants based on their sensitivity to general anesthetics, much like proteins are separated by column chromatography. Through this work, and by the isolation and characterization of the first mutants that altered sensitivity to general anaesthesia, Krishnan challenged and refuted the Meyer-Overton principle, which held that anesthetic potency was determined primarily by lipid solubility. This work, received considerable international acclaim and stimulated new fields of research in Drosophila neurogenetics. It was also subsequently highlighted in an episode of a BBC documentary series (Moments of Genious).

On returning in 1990 from his sabbatical in the NIH, Krishnan briefly began to record and analyze bird songs on the TIFR campus, but then returned to the lab to help and work with his now long time collaborator and friend, Mani Ramaswami, then a fresh recruit to the NCBS and TIFR. Krishnan's invention of a remarkable device that he called the 'sushi cooker' to isolate mutations in neurotransmission enabled him and Mani to provide many fundamental insights into mechanisms of synaptic transmission and membrane recycling and in doing so, to first bring contemporary cell biological thinking to the study of synaptic transmission in Drosophila. In his inimitable and playful research style, when he found that certain affected flies fall asleep for days at a time - he named this mutation "Kumbhakarna", after a figure from the Ramayana who used to sleep for 6 months. In collaboration with Satyajit Mayor (at NCBS), again Krishnan in his own ingenious fashion, developed ways to analyze the phenotypes of these mutations in cells taken from mutant animals, again a pioneering achievement..

To his colleagues, he was unpretentious and a fount of ideas tumbling forth so fast as to leave us far behind. In the words of Mani Ramaswami, "Krishnan's incomparable range of knowledge and expertise as well as his irrepressible creativity put the term interdisciplinary to shame. He would probably have enjoyed a laugh at being labeled 'indisciplinary.' He loved, obsessed over and generously discussed nature, people, ideas, history, science, culture and concepts with unfettered enthusiasm, uncorrupted by desire for personal advancement. He recognized and greatly enjoyed others who showed even a hint of these qualities. Anyone who interacted with Krishnan, even if sometimes exhausted by the range of lateral connections that appeared naturally and seamlessly in Krishnan's mind, came away a more intelligent and better person, with rekindled interest in science, enhanced purity of spirit and fresh enjoyment of life. His contribution to NCBS in recent years has been tremendous. Not only scientifically, but also because through his actions he projected a view of NCBS as a wonderful scientific haven open to all with deep interest and ability in science, rather than as an elitist and exclusionary institution."

His greatest gift to us all was to remind us to be amazed at the wonders of life around us. He leaves us, and the world of science with a gaping hole that will be difficult to fill. We will miss him hugely.

Also see: Comments by K VijayRaghavan

Also see: Dr. Krishnan's wild side