Blossom Garden Friends Peace & Education Center

13961 Sisson Highway, Collins, NY 14034  | phone: 716-532-1004 |  email:  bgfs@roadrunner.com

Biography of Thamby Ninan, Ph. D., Professor Emeritus, SUNY Erie

Dr. Thamby Ninan, Professor Emeritus, SUNY Erie, spent his very adventurous boyhood growing up in Kerala, India.  Kerala is a small state which lies between the Western Ghat Mountains and the Arabian Sea.

As a boy he helped wash temple elephants when they were bathed in the river.  He also tamed a young mynah bird who rode around on his shoulder and talked like a person!

He always enjoyed special holidays in Kerala, especially Onam – the harvest festival when King Mahabali returned to earth to see if his people were doing well.  He watched snake-boat races (a Kerala longboat holding 100 people or more), eating special treats arranged on a banana leaf, and enjoying the arrangements of flower petals in intricate patterns on the ground in front of houses.

Dr. Ninan received his Ph D. from Michigian State University.  He published several papers on Genetics in international journals.  After graduation, he taught at Huntington University in Indiana.

While there, he worked on a project at Johns Hopkins University with chimpanzees, which determined which human chromosomes do not fluoresce.  The results were published in Journal of Heredity.  He also attended a month-long workshop at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, in James Watson’s lab (DNA breakthrough) to study DNA sequencing techniques.

Dr. Ninan came to Western New York to work as a research scientist at Roswell Park Cancer Institute on human cells and cell culture.  When the Roswell grant was completed, he was hired at SUNY Erie, and founded the Biology Department at South Campus, where he taught for 44 years..

He received an NIH $100,000 research grant to study “Diffusion Chamber Techniques to Identify Carcinogens in the Environment.”

He took his students to the Alexander Preserve to identify plant species growing there, and their changes over the years.  They made an inventory of all those that grew on the flood plain.  Specimens collected year after year gave an idea of the succession taking place which brought changes in the plant population.

He fondly remembers his growing years in Kerala, the land of his boyhood, and is glad to share some of those wonderful memories.