Ranajit Chakraborty

Ranajit Chakraborty was a world-renowned scientist in the field of human and population genetics. He was born in Baranagore, West Bengal, India on April 17, 1946. He graduated from the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta with a Bachelor of Statistics degree in 1967, a Master of Statistics degree in 1968, and a Ph.D. in Biostatistics in 1971. His dissertation supervisor was C. R. Rao, FRS. In 1973, he joined the faculty at the Center for Demographic and Population Genetics, which is now the Human Genetics Center, at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. He held various positions there, including the Allan King Professorship at the School of Public Health from 1996 to 2001. He also served on the faculties of several other universities, such as University of Houston, Stanford University, University of Stockholm, University of Michigan, Rice University, and Universidad de Chile. In 2001, he became the Robert A. Kehoe Professor and Director of the Center for Genome Information at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 2009, he joined the Department of Forensic and Investigative Genetics, University of North Texas Health Science Center, Fort Worth, Texas as a Professor of Molecular and Medical Genetics and Director of the Center for Computational Genomics. His scientific contributions include studies in human genetics, population genetics, genetic epidemiology, statistical genetics, and forensic genetics. He wrote six books and over 600 scientific articles on these topics. He collaborated with many eminent scientists, such as Masatoshi Nei, Takeo Maruyama, Paul Fuerst, K. Sankaranarayanan, and others. He also contributed to the development of methods and software for DNA analysis and identification. He received many awards and honors for his work, such as the Darwin–Wallace Medal from the Linnean Society of London in 2008, the William Allan Award from the American Society of Human Genetics in 2010, and the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Indian Society of Human Genetics in 2012. He was also a Fellow of several prestigious organizations, such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science , the American Statistical Association , and the Third World Academy of Sciences . He died on September 23, 2018 in Fort Worth, Texas at the age of 72. He is survived by his wife Dr. Bandana M. Chakraborty.