Yellapragada Subbarao - Recognition and Delayed Acknowledgement

Recognition and Delayed Acknowledgement

Subbarao's memory has been obscured by the achievements of others and his failure to promote his own interests. Part of the reason for his obscurity was that Subbarao did not market his work, or himself. A patent attorney was once astonished to find that he had not taken any of the steps that scientists everywhere consider routine for linking their name to their handiwork. He never granted interviews to the press; he never made the rounds of the academies which apportion accolades; nor did he go on lecture tours.

His colleague, George Hitchings, who shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Gertrude Elion, said, "Some of the nucleotides isolated by Subbarao had to be rediscovered years later by other workers because Fiske, apparently out of jealousy, did not let Subbarao's contributions see the light of the day."

A fungus was named Subbaromyces splendens in his honor by American Cyanamid.

Writing in the April 1950 issue of Argosy, Doron K. Antrim observed, "You've probably never heard of Dr. Yellapragada Subbarao. Yet because he lived you may be alive and are well today. Because he lived you may live longer."