M. S. Swaminathan - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Swaminathan’s family was among the most important in the village of Moncombu. Generations before, the rajah of Ambalapuzha had traveled to the neighboring region of Tamil Nadu. He had been very impressed by the scholars at the Thanjavur court and requested that one such scholar be sent to his province. Enji Venkatachella Iyer, Swaminathan’s ancestor, was chosen to move to Ambalapuzha. The rajah was so delighted and struck by Venkatachella Iyer’s knowledge of the scriptures that he gifted him acres of land comprising the village of Monkombu. The family came to be called the Kottaram family (‘kottaram’ means palace).

M. S. Swaminathan was born in Kumbakonam on August 7, 1925. His father died when Swaminathan was 11. His early schooling was at the Native High School and later at the Little Flower Catholic High School in Kumbakonam.

He went to college at Maharajas College in Trivandrum, Kerala (now known as University College, Thiruvananthapuram), studied there during 1940-44 and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in zoology. During the time of wartime food shortages he chose a career in agriculture and enrolled in Tamil Nadu Agricultural University where he graduated as valedictorian with another Bachelor of Science degree, this time in Agricultural Science. In 1947, the year of Indian independence he moved to the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) in New Delhi as a post-graduate student in genetics and plant breeding and obtained a post-graduate degree with high distinction in Cytogenetics in 1949.

He later received a UNESCO Fellowship to continue his IARI research on potato genetics at the Wageningen Agricultural University, Institute of Genetics in the Netherlands. Here he succeeded in standardizing procedures for transferring genes from a wide range of wild species of Solanum to the cultivated potato, Solanum tuberosum. In 1950, he moved to study at the Plant Breeding Institute of the University of Cambridge School of Agriculture. He earned a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D) degree in 1952, for his thesis, "Species Differentiation, and the Nature of Polyploidy in certain species of the genus Solanum – section Tuberarium". His work presented a new concept of the species relationships within the tuber-bearing Solanum.

Swaminathan then accepted a post-doctoral research associateship at the University of Wisconsin, Department of Genetics to help set up a USDA Potato Research Station. Despite his strong personal and professional satisfaction with the research work in Wisconsin, he declined the offer of a full-time faculty position, returning to India in early 1954.