K. Venkataraman

K. Venkataraman (1901-1981) was an Indian chemist. He mainly dealt with synthesis of dyes and organic compounds.

Krishnaswamy (also stylized as Krishnasamy) Venkataraman was born at Madras (now Chennai) on June 7, 1901. He studied chemistry in the Presidency College, Madras and obtained his MA from Madras University in 1923. Venkataraman obtained M.Sc (Tech) in colour chemistry at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, and went to England, where he was a doctoral student with Robert Robinson.

After coming back to India, he taught at Forman Christian College, Lahore (then part of undivided India). He then became a full Professor of Chemical Engineering in 1936 at the University of Bombay (now Mumbai). He was the 1st Indian director (2nd overall) of the University Department of Chemical Technology (UDCT, now Institute of Chemical Technology) in Mumbai. He was a colleague of Prof. T. R. Seshadri. After retiring from UDCT in 1957, he became the 3rd director of the National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) in Poona (now Pune).

Shortly after the Second World War, he learned about the state of the dye industry in Germany. After the war was over, he was appointed to the British field intelligence team (technical). With the data compiled over few years, he worked towards publishing the seminal work on dye chemistry, "The Chemistry of Synthetic Dyes" (Academic Press, 1952- 1978, 8 volumes).

Baker-Venkataraman rearrangement ( synthesis of 1,3-diketone-substituted phenol derivatives), a variant of the Allan-Robinson reaction, is named after him and Wilson Baker (1900-2002).

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