Dr. R. Ananthanarayan

Ananthanarayan and Paniker's Textbook of Microbiology was first published in 1978 and is now in its eleventh edition, revised for competency-based medical education. For close to fifty years it has been the standard microbiology text in Indian medical schools — the counterpart, in its field, to Harsh Mohan in pathology.

Born in Thiruvananthapuram, Ananthanarayan graduated from Madras Medical College in 1941 and served in the Army Medical Corps during the Second World War. He joined Stanley Medical College in Madras in 1946, and in 1953 took a PhD at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine with a dissertation on the fabric of the influenza virus.

That virological training was put to use: he was a member of the team set up to monitor the Asian influenza pandemic of 1957–58, and his work on influenza strains was recognised by the World Health Organization. It is a reminder that the textbook authors in this series were, first, working scientists.

He became Professor of Bacteriology at Trivandrum Medical College, then Principal of Calicut Medical College from 1961 to 1967 and later of Kottayam Medical College. After retiring in 1969 he held a professorship in microbiology at Mahadevappa Rampure Medical College in Kalaburagi. He was President of the Indian Association of Pathologists and Microbiologists in 1976, and died in 1998.