Lalji Singh (1947–2017)

Dr Lalji Singh is well known among biologists, investigative agencies, the judicial system and common people, due to his hard work and commitment to science and the society. Singh was born on 5 July 1947 in a middle-class family in Kalwari village, Jaunpur district, Uttar Pradesh. He obtained his Ph D degree (sex chromosomes in snakes) under the supervision of S. P. Raychaudhuri at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi. Then he went to the laboratory of K. W. Jones at the Institute of Animal Genetics, University of Edinburgh, UK on a Commonwealth Fellowship to work on his own research problem of sex determination (in snakes), which is still one of the major unsolved problems in biology.