Chemistry of Plant Natural Products

Professor Sunil Kumar Talapatra has taught stereochemistry, conformational analysis, reaction mechanisms and alkaloids in the postgraduate classes of Calcutta University (CU) and Presidency College (now University), Kolkata for more than three decades, and has been teaching stereochemistry for the last three decades in some other universities of W. Bengal and Tripura as a Guest teacher. He did PhD (CU) and post-doctoral work with Professor (Mrs) Asima Chatterjee and then post-doctoral work (4 yr) with Professor Michael P Cava at OSU, Columbus. Professor Talapatra's research contributions include the discovery, structure elucidation and stereochemistry of more than 100 new bioactive secondary metabolites (from medicinal plants), mostly alkaloids and terpenoids of different classes, coumarins and other polyphenolics, cardiac glycosides, one new C26 tetracyclic diamine from a marine sponge, synthesis and mechanisms. He was a Visiting Scientist at the Illinois U (Chicago), UCSC, and UCSD. As a UNESCO Senior Visiting Scientist (1982) he was briefly associated with Professors E J Corey, K Nakanishi, H Rapoport, J Meinwald, N Takahashi and Y Kanaoka. He participated in many International Conferences held worldwide. He supervised numerous PhD students and post-doctoral Fellows who joined Universities, IITK, Research Institutes, Colleges, and pursued their own teaching and research careers. The author of more than 175 research papers and a recipient of several awards, he was a British Council Guest Visitor (1973) in UK, under INSA and UGC Cultural Exchange Programmes in Hungary and Czechoslovakia and was elected FRIC (London) in 1974, President of the Indian Chemical Society (2002 & 2003), and has been a Vice-President of the Indian Science News Association since 2008.Professor Bani Talapatra has taught natural products chemistry at Calcutta University (CU) for more than three decades, and in some other universities of W. Bengaland Tripura as a Guest teacher for more than a decade. She also taught general chemistry in a local undergraduate college for several years during her early professional career. She obtained the D.Sc. degree of the CU working in the laboratory of Professor (Mrs) Asima Chatterjee and then joined a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Vanderbilt University (VU) with the renowned microbiologist, Professor V. Najjar. At VU she had the privilege of coming in personal contact with Sir C K Ingold for few months (1964) when she learnt from him much about organic reaction mechanism. As a UNESCO Senior Visiting Scientist (in 1976 and 1983) she extensively travelled and visited many major universities of USA, Europe, and Japan and was briefly associated with Professors H. Rapoport, S Masamune, W Herz, W Parker, F Bohlmann, H. Wagner, W. Kraus and N. Takahashi. She also participated in a number of International Conferences in Europe, South-East Asia and India. Professor Talapatra's research interests include various aspects of natural products chemistry including terpenoids, alkaloids, polyphenolics, and reaction mechanisms. She has published more than 130 research papers and 15 students have obtained a PhD degree of the CU under her guidance.