When collagen, abundantly available in all the connective tissues of animals, humans included, emerged as an important research problem right after the discovery of the double helix, G.N Ramchandran (GNR), a young Indian scientist at the University of Madras, took up this topic as his main research problem. Working from the peripheral location of the Madras University in the newly-independent India during the 1950s, Ramchandran really had very little of hopes making an actual discovery, for already numerous elite research groups, such as Caltech or the University of Cambridge, had flung themselves in the game. And yet, in the end, Ramchandran finally cracked the structure of collagen, thus producing what has sometimes been called the Madras triple helix model.
Trained in his early career by CV Raman, and thereafter at the University of Cambridge under Lawrence Bragg, GNR returned to India during 1950s to pursue new lines of research. The small Indian scientific community, whose roots had been established during the colonial times, needed fresh discoveries and achievements so as to establish themselves in the scientific game. The discovery of the triple helix structure of collagen by GNR allowed him to bring a new lease of life to this small scientific community as well as to establish a trading zone with the Western scientific community. In exploring the fine structure of the trading zone that GNR built via his collagen model we see how newcomers in science can often function as important sources for new ideas and new insights.
