Anil Lala (1950–2004)

Abstract

Anil Kumar Lala, Professor of Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay and a member of the Editorial Board of Protein Science, died on July 17, 2004, following a stroke that he suffered three weeks earlier. Born on January 13, 1950, Lala received his B.Sc. from Delhi University and obtained his Ph.D. at Bombay University in 1974, working under the supervision of A.B. Kulkarni. His doctoral work was in the area of steroid chemistry, introducing him to the areas of NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry. Following a year at the Central Drug Research Institute in Lucknow, Lala moved to the State University of Ghent, Belgium, to work with Marc Anteunis. I first saw his name in a scientific publication when the conformational analysis of methionine enkephalin, then recently discovered as the endogeneous ligand for the opioid receptor, was described by the French and Belgian groups with Lala as a co-author (Roques et al. 1976). In 1976, he moved to Harvard University to work with Konrad Bloch. This period sparked his lifelong interest in membranes, specifically lipid-protein interactions. Lala joined the chemistry department at IIT, Mumbai, in 1979, where he spent the remaining 25 years of his scientific career.