Biography
Krishnaswami Venkataraman, Indian organic chemist (Chennai 07 June 1901 – New Delhi 12 May 1981)
Authored 271 papers
Authored a classical treatise on chemistry of dyes and dye intermediates named The Chemistry of Synthetic Dyes in five volumes (1-2 in 1952 and 3-5 in 1971-8) translated into 14 foreign languages
Discovered Baker-Venkataraman transformation or rearrangement
A synthesis of flavones at room temperature. Curr. Sci. (1933)
Isolated flavonoids from plant sources and elucidated their structures
Demonstrated the presence of nitrogen in some lac pigments
Isolated and characterized a number of natural pigments belonging to anthraquinonoid group (e.g. laccaic acids A and B)
Isolated artocarpanone from Artocarpus heterophyllus
Developed methods for selective demethylation of methoxy flavonoids under mild Lewis acid conditions, for introduction of hydroxyl groups in oxygen heterocycles involving nitration or azocoupling, replacement of nuclear OH by through tosylation followed by Raney nickel hydrogenolysis and many more such procedures
Developed several new synthetic procedures, chromatographic separation techniques and simple and practical methods for the characterization and estimation of dyes
Developed a method for the facile hydrolysis of the anilides of o-hydroxy carboxylic acids
Demonstrated the deshielding effect of azogroup of azodyes in their nuclear magnetic resonance spectra
Developed new textile auxiliary agents for industrial use
Developed column chromatographic technique under hot conditions (100-150° C) for study of dyes
Developed some simple methods for the analysis and estimation of dyes and related compounds (e.g. introduced Congo Rubine Number to determine the protective colloidal action of surface active compounds and discovered that naphthols could be estimated by precipitating them by acidifying their alkaline solution in water or aqueous alcohol and weighing their precipitate)
