Subramania Ranganathan (1934--2016)

Abstract

dissects the efforts that went into the sculpting of the vitamin B12 molecule in the laboratory, one finds two kinds of sculpting—one of the plastic or clay kind where material is added or fused into shape and the other the stone kind where material is chipped off to shape. Bonds, substituents and moieties, and where necessary, bonds and groups were also removed from the molecular framework out of which the final molecule was made. Similar strategies were used by the composer Johann Sebastian Bach in his' Art of the Fugue'and'the Well Tem pered Clavier', and by the artist MC Escher in his' Encountering Men'or his woodcut'Snakes'. Alas, we no longer see such prose in science! Ranga himself created complex mole cules-some spherical, some knotted and some twisted into double helices-for the fun of it.