Nallagounder Periasamy did his BSc (1967) in Chemistry from Madras University and MSc (1969) from IIT Madras. He was in the 13th batch of BARC Training School and joined TIFR in 1970 as Research Associate, becoming Senior Professor in 2006. He obtained the PhD (1976) from Bombay University for his studies on electrochemiluminescence and was a postdoctoral Fellow at Brandeis University (1977-78) and Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Gottingen (1980-81). He was Visiting Scientist/Professor in CNR-ISM, Bologna and University of California, San Francisco.

Academic and Research Achievements: Periasamy initially studied formation of excited states by electron transfer reaction of electrochemically generated organic radicals, laser flash photolysis and laser spectroscopy. He later, concentrated on studies of fluorescence spectroscopy and dynamics, covering a range of detailed experimental studies on translational and rotational diffusion of molecules in liquids and micelles, interpretation of fluorescence heterogeneity in proteins and membranes; development of methods for analysis of fluorescence data in complex systems; developing Time Resolved Area Normalized Emission Spectroscopy (TRANES) and showing it to be a powerful method for the study of fluorescence heterogeneity in complex biological environment; and adapting MEM for analysis of time domain data for extracting the distribution of a physical parameter. Still later, his interest shifted to materials chemistry and synthesis and properties of molecules for organic electronics. Formation and properties of porphyrin J-aggregate and other self-assembled molecular aggregates were studied extensively. He also authored over 110 research articles and guided five PhD students.

Awards and Honours: Professor Periasamy received the Silver Medal by the Chemical Research Society of India (2006/2007), Professor K Venkataraman Lectureship Award (1998) of UDCT, Mumbai, and Homi Bhabha Prize (1970) of the BARC Training School. He was elected Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore (1994), and National Academy of Sciences (India), Allahabad (2002).