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Prof. Obaid Siddiqi, born in Basti district of Uttar Pradesh and educated at Aligarh Muslim University and Glasgow, set up the molecular biology unit at TIFR in 1962. Using the fruit fly, his group studied how genes shape behaviour, smell and taste. He was the founding director of the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru.
Key contributions
- Helped launch neurogenetics with temperature-sensitive paralytic fly mutants (with Seymour Benzer)
- First collection of fly mutants defective in smell and taste (with Veronica Rodrigues)
- Founding director of NCBS, Bengaluru
- Fellow of the Royal Society (1984); Padma Vibhushan (2006)