K. Krishna Rao—a lifetime study of ferredoxins and solar hydrogen

Abstract

photosynthesis as a renewable energy source, and carried out most of his work in King’s College London with David Hall. Krishna was born in 1928 in the village of Kadakkal, in Kerala state, at the southern tip of India, the son of Kuppan Poti Rao and Bhageerathi Rao. The ‘‘K’’ in Krishna’s name stands for ‘‘Kuppan’’ from his father’s name, according to the local tradition there. His father was a primary school teacher. For his secondary education, Krishna had to move to a larger town, then on to Trivandrum (Thiruvananthapuram) where he studied Chemistry at the University College. He obtained his M.Sc. in 1950 in Travancore (Thiruvithaamkoor, now part of Kerala state), and became lecturer in Scott Christian College, Nagercoil, India, which was run by the London Mission Society. He taught organic, physical and inorganic chemistry to degree level. In 1951, he married the daughter (Retnam) of the professor of chemistry, herself a scientist. In 1962, from thousands of other applicants, he was chosen for a United States State Department Scholarship. He chose to take it at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, where the climate was similar to that at home. The State Department at that time was promoting multiculturalism, and scholarship holders were expected to travel around the state and on the mainland, talking to summer schools about their home country and customs, while dressed in their native costume, a duty which Krishna much enjoyed. In the University of Hawaii, he took his Ph.D. with Howard Mower. Ferredoxins had been discovered in plants and bacteria, and were known to be important for photosynthesis and nitrogen fixation. His thesis was on the sequence and properties of the ferredoxin from taro (Colocasia esculenta), a local food plant both in Southern India and Hawaii. At that time, Mower’s group was also working on hydrogenase, a subject that was to play an important part in Krishna’s later career (Ackrell et al. 1966). R. Cammack (&) Department of Biochemistry, King’s College London, Franklin-Wilkins Building 150, Stamford St, London SE1 9NH, UK e-mail: richard.cammack@kcl.ac.uk Krishna Rao in his laboratory in London, UK Photosynth Res DOI 10.1007/s11120-006-9080-x