Tiruvadi Sambasiva Venkataraman

Tiruvadi Sambasiva Venkataraman, born in 1884 and died in 1963, was an Indian botanist, agronomist and plant geneticist who specialized in the study and hybridization of sugarcane. He developed or supervised the development of numerous high-yield sugarcane cultivars that helped establish India as the world's second largest sugar producer, work that also influenced sugar production in South Africa, Australia and the United States, and in 1942 he became the first Indian agricultural scientist to receive a knighthood.