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FALL 2005
Research Spotlight: Gordhan Patel
by Tack Cornelius

After five years as UGA’s vice president for research and associate provost, Gordhan Patel retired Aug. 1, 2005. Under his leadership, external funding for UGA research programs grew 30 percent. Construction of the Paul D. Coverdell Center for the Biomedical Health Sciences will soon be completed and major renovation of the Animal Health Research Center (see sidebar on page 20) will be dedicated in April 2006.

In conventional wisdom,intelligence is the most important trait for scientists — sheer brainpower. But Gordhan L. Patel puts a different essential trait at the top of his list: curiosity.

“If you’re not curious, you won’t ask the questions ‘why’ and ‘how,’” he said. “You just accept things. The history of science is the history of people asking these questions.”

Curiosity’s cousin — imagination — also ranks high on Patel’s list of traits a scientist needs: the ability to see new links between things or, on a grander scale, to see the world in new ways, as did his intellectual heroes, Newton, Darwin and Einstein.

For 38 years, Patel’s own curiosity and imagination have animated his work at the University of Georgia. He arrived in 1967 as an assistant professor of zoology and retired Aug. 1, 2005, a distinguished teacher, researcher and administrator.

“Gordhan has been foremost an exceptional and effective leader, whether as a faculty colleague, department head, dean or vice president,” said Joe Crim, associate vice president for instruction. “He is universally respected.”

David Landau, Distinguished Research Professor in physics and director of the Center for Simulational Physics, echoed that appraisal.

“As dean of the graduate school and as vice president for research, he showed vision, common sense and a sense of organization, combined with risk-taking and prudence in just the right amounts. Besides this, he is a fascinating guy to talk to,” Landau said.

Even as Patel was face to face with retirement and, at last, some leisure, his continuing enthusiasm for his work poured out in conversation. Asked about the general focus of his research, his straightforward answer — “the biochemistry of the cell nucleus” — could not dam up the teacher and researcher in him. “The nucleus is the head office where you have all the blueprints, all the plans you need,” he said. “In the human case, each cell has six linear feet of DNA. Think about the architectural challenge of packaging six feet of double- stranded DNA into that microscopic nucleus.”

From there he was off and running along the Watson and Crick strands of the double helix, describing how the strands “unwind” and are positioned for replication, gene expression and much more.

The same passion came through as he talked about objectivity in research.

“I always tell students, ‘Remember, you’re testing the hypothesis; you’re not proving the hypothesis. Don’t look at results and say, “This result does not fit my hypothesis.” Ask, what is the result telling me?’ It may be telling you that your hypothesis is wrong,” he said.

Sometimes it can take decades to verify a hypothesis.

In the ’70s, Patel purified a protein that facilitates the unwinding of the DNA double helix, this unwinding being a necessary step for replicating and transcribing genes. In a 1985 paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he and his collaborators postulated that, during evolution, some proteins may have been recruited for more than one function. This past spring investigators at Johns Hopkins University published a review of research reported during the past 20 years that strongly supports that 1985 prediction.

Patel actually grew up wanting to be a physician, prompted by his parents and admiration for Albert Schweitzer: “You cannot grow up in Africa without hearing about Schweitzer,” he said.

In the late ’20s, Patel’s father and uncle had sailed from India planning to settle in South Africa. But a change in immigration policy, which occurred while they were en route, prompted them to settle in Mozambique instead. (His mother emigrated from India in the early ’30s.)

“Someone once asked me, ‘Why were you born in Mozambique?’ ‘Well, I had this need to be near my mother,’” he quipped.

In Mozambique, Patel was educated primarily in the Portuguese schools. He also went part-time to schools that the Indian community had established to teach Indian language and culture. His parents wanted him to go to a university in Europe, but a teacher at the Indian school in Mozambique, “got me all fired up about going to India for my cultural needs,” Patel said. And so he did. An unintended consequence of that decision eventually put him on a course to the United States.

At Washington University in St. Louis — inspired by the “charismatic professor and quintessential scholar” Viktor Hamburger — he switched to basic science and earned both his A.B. and Ph.D. By 1967, he was being courted by SUNY-Buffalo, California, Chicago, Nebraska and Georgia Tech. Immediately following an interview at Tech, he received a call from UGA, inviting him back to Georgia for an interview, where “they made me an offer I could not turn down,” he said.

And he has been a “bulldawg” ever since.

“Gordhan is a dedicated bulldog and strong advocate for students, faculty and staff. [He is] always committed to doing the right thing and [is] a consummate gentleman,” said Karen Holbrook, a friend, former colleague at UGA and now president of Ohio State University. “He has a national following of admirers and friends, and I'm proud to be among them.”

Patel stresses that UGA was home to some excellent researchers long before it became known as a top-flight research institution. Among them: the late Eugene Odum, often called the “father of modern ecology,” who joined the faculty in the ’40s; the late George H. Boyd, a noted parasitologist and dean of the graduate school in the ’50s for whom the Boyd Graduate Studies Research Center is named; and the late Harry Peck, a former head of the biochemistry department in the ’50s and ’60s.

For the retired vice president, the notion of research encompasses a broad range of scholarly activity.

“When we talk about research, it’s not just the hard sciences,” he said. “No university will ever be a great university unless it is strong across all the disciplines — the arts and humanities, the social sciences and the professional areas.”

As fall classes began, Patel was getting his first taste of retirement in Athens, with his wife, Jinx, whom he met at Washington University.

“I admire Gordhan and consider him to be a ‘Renaissance Man,’ a true academician and a leader, always fair and willing to confront and solve difficult problems,” said Jinx Patel, who runs a biological company in Athens. “He is a wonderful and loving father, grandfather, husband — and my best friend for over 40 years.”

And he is a man of clear priorities. “My career has always come after my family and friends,” he said. Daughter Elizabeth, her husband, Anthony DeMarco, an ophthalmologist, and their two children live in Athens. Younger daughter Krishna is finishing her residency in otolaryngology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

Among the Patels’ close friends are several couples who call themselves “the usual suspects,” and spend a lot of time together, according to Margaret Holt, retired UGA professor of adult education and longtime group member.

“Gordhan is a central figure in this friendship” she said, and through the years has always made time for the group. “We’ve watched and applauded his tremendous accomplishments, and I can say none of his promotions and assignments have altered whatsoever his commitment to our friendships.”

Tack Cornelius is a Gainesville, Ga.-based freelance writer.