Nuggehalli Raghuveer Moudgal (4 March 1931 – 8 May 2011) was an Indian reproductive biologist, endocrinologist and the chairman of the Department of Biochemistry and dean of Faculty of Science at the Indian Institute of Science. He was known for his pioneering researches on gonadotropin and was an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy. He was an associate of noted scientists, Choh Hao Li and Rodney Robert Porter and discovered the role of hormones in generating immune response in living beings, during his association with the former. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to Medical Sciences in 1976.
Biography
Raghuveer Moudgal was born on 4 March 1931 in Mysore, in the south Indian state of Karnataka, in a Hindu family to Vaidehi, a homemaker and N. Narasimha Moudgal, an electrical engineer with the State Electricity Board who reportedly contributed significantly to the electrification of the erstwhile Mysore state. He was the youngest of their three boys and two girls. His early schooling was at Seshadripuram High School, Bengaluru where he passed the matriculation in 1946. He moved to Kolhapur to complete his graduate studies at the University of Bombay in 1950, staying at his elder sister's house. Opting for a research degree for his post graduate studies, he joined the University of Madras and earned an MSc for his researches on the biochemistry of thyroid hormones. Continuing in Chennai, he pursued his doctoral studies under the guidance of P. S. Sarma, a noted biochemist, and secured a PhD in 1957. He went to the University of California, Berkeley in the US for his post-doctoral studies and worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the laboratory of Choh Hao Li, a Chinese-born US biochemist who would later describe the structure of somatotropin, a pituitary growth hormone. In 1961, he moved out of the US to continue his post-doctoral work in the UK at St Mary's Hospital Medical School, London on a Wellcome Trust fellowship. There, he joined the wards of Rodney Robert Porter, Nobel laureate biochemist, and spent a year at Porter's laboratory. On his return to India, he joined the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi as a CSIR Pool Officer. It was during this period his doctoral adviser, P. S. Sarma, invited him to join the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) as an assistant professor. At IISc, he continued his researches with the assistance of a grant from Ford Foundation and in 1969 he received an invitation from R. O. Greep of Harvard University for collaborative research. Moudgal stayed at Harvard for two years to supervise the work of Greep's Group and returned to IISc in 1971. He based his subsequent researches at the institute, simultaneously working as an associate professor and later as a professor. At the time of his retirement from official service in 1993, he was holding the positions of the Chairman of the Department of Biochemistry and the Dean of the Science Faculty. Post retirement, he continued to be associated with IISc as an INSA senior scientist and an honorary professor. Moudgal was pursuing his doctoral studies at Madras University when he married Biligiri Rao née Prapulla in 1957. The couple had two sons, Pradeep and Madan, and a daughter, Priya. Towards the later part of his life, he suffered from cancer and underwent treatment in the US. He succumbed to the disease on 8 May 2011, at a hospital in Dublin, California, survived by his children, their spouses and grandchildren; his wife predeceased him in 2008.
Legacy
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