Education
A native ofCareer
During his second post-doctoral stint (1989–90) at the then Medical College of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Sri Kantha collected material for his first reference book. ''Prostitutes in Medical Literature: an annotated bibliography'' (1991). David Friedrichs, reviewing this work for the ''American Reference Books Annual 1992'', indicated, "Currently, of course, there is intense concern with prostitution as a source for the transmission of AIDS. Accordingly, the extensive list of relevant items will be exceptionally useful to researchers." Vern Bullough and Lilli Sentz annotated this book as, "Is somewhat broader than the title indicates and includes general and history, anthropology, sociology, psychology and mental health. Particularly good on sexually transmitted diseases."Scientific contributions
In 1991, Sri Kantha wrote a paper on the nomination nepotism in the awarding of Nobel prizes, claiming that many prizes given between 1901 and 1937 were not based solely on merit but rather were motivated by preference in the German research community. In 1992, Sri Kantha published a paper on the prolific productivity of eight prominent scientists, among whom three (Paul Karrer, Giulio Natta and Herbert C. Brown) were chemistry Nobel laureates. As these scientists have published over 1,000 research publications, he gave a humorous tag ''Kilo Base Goliaths'' (KBGs) for these super achievers in the laboratory. While commenting on this paper, Marsh Tenney added that among physiologists, Swiss physiologist Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777) should hold the record for writing some 13,000 scientific papers, but I suspect that number more correctly includes his poems and other short pieces that were not scientific. Nonetheless, after they are properly accounted, the record is still astonishing. Recently John Ioannidis and his colleagues had proposed an almost identical phrase ‘hyper-prolific authors’ for the same group of super achievers, identified as ‘Kilo Base Goliaths’, by Sri Kantha in 1992. In 1996, Sri Kantha proposed a new term ‘galactic organism with distinct intelligence’ (GODI), for extraterrestrial forms, with which humans can make contact. This is because, among the other two popular acronyms, unidentified flying object (UFO) projects a sense of mysticism and extraterrestrials (ET) do not distinguish clearly distinguish microorganisms without intelligence and intelligent human-like life forms. He also identified that the bottleneck factor in inter-stellar travel by humans was the current rocket velocity of 28,000 km/h. This needs to be increased 3,600 fold to reach the one-tenth speed of light for inter-stellar travel. Sri Kantha also published a novel hypothesis on the premature death of chemist-inventor and philanthropist Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) in 1997. Commenting on this hypothesis, K.M. Reese wrote, ‘Kantha bases his hypothesis in part on the memoirs of Ragnar Sohlman, Nobel’s personal assistant during the last three years of his life. He also drew on Nobel’s letters and recent knowledge of nitroglycerine poisoning. After studying a cluster of 35 centenarian scientists, Sri Kantha proposed in 2001 that such centenarian scientists are an unusual cluster first formed in the 20th century. When K.M. Reese annotated the ''Lancet'' letter of Sri Kantha in his weekly column to the ''Chemical and Engineering News'', many American readers contributed the names of chemists and inventors who did become centenarians in the 20th century. Furthermore, in 2003, while being affiliated to the Primate Research Center of Kyoto University, Sri Kantha posed a somewhat controversial query, ‘Is somnambulism a distinct disorder of humans and not seen in non-human primates?’ Answer to this question still eludes primatologists, geneticists and medical researchers. In 2016, Sri Kantha proposed a four-fold classification on love bites or monkey bites based on trauma grade. These are, type 1 (consensual sex play), type 2 (consensual sex play sliding into sexual aggression), type 3 (sexual aggression of hetero variety) and type 4 (self biting of auto variety). While type 1 is the most discussed occurrence among willing partners, other three types may become serious and need medical attention. Influenced by the scientometric contributions of Eugene Garfield, Sri Kantha had also puiblished on the scientific productivity and unusual creativity of some elite scientists including Alfred Nobel, Albert Einstein, Karl Landsteiner, Sigmund Freud, Bertrand Russell, Francis Crick, James Watson, William Masters, Alex Comfort, and Wardell Pomeroy. Sri Kantha had also studied the little known facets on medical themes from the works of Shakespeare, Gogol,Work as a biographer
In 2005, Sri Kantha published his 640-page biography book onBooks by Sri Kantha
* ''Prostitutes in Medical Literature: An Annotated Bibliography'', Bibliographies and Indexes in Medical Studies, No.6, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 1991, 256 pp. * ''An Einstein Dictionary'', Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 1996, 298 pp. * ''Atlas of Neuroactive Substances and Their Receptors in the Rat'', edited by Masaya Tohyama and Koichi Takatsuji, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998, 337 pp. . (translator from Japanese to English) * ''Pirabhakaran Phenomenon'', Lively Comet Imprint, Gifu City, Japan. 2005, 641 pp, .Books referring to Sri Kantha
* Bullough, Vern L and Lilli Sentz (Ed). ''Prostitution – A Guide to Sources'', ''1960-1990'', Garland Publishing Inc., New York, 1992. . * Calaprice, Alice (Ed). ''The New Quotable Einstein'', Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2005. . * Dobson, Roger. ''Death Can be Cured and 99 Other Medical Hypotheses'', Cyan Communications Ltd, London, 2007. . * Kabdebo, Thomas and Neil Armstrong. ''Dictionary of Dictionaries and Eminent Encyclopedias'', Bowker-Saur, West Sussex, 2nd ed, 1997. * Rappoport, Leon. ''Punchlines: The Case for Racial, Ethnic and Gender Humor'', Praeger Publishers, Westport, Connecticut, 2005. . * Sugimoto, Kenji. ''Dai Tsui Seki-Einstein No Tensai No 大追跡‼ アインシュタインの天才脳'', Kodansha Sophia Books, Tokyo, 2001. . (in Japanese). * Boutheina Boughnim Laarif. ''W.H.Auden's ‘The Healing Fountain’ read through A.Aviram's Theory of Poetic Rhythm'', Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastleupon Tyne, UK, 2017. . * Colin Beckley and Ute Bonillas. ''The Evolution of Diversity'', Think Logically Books, 2017. . * Bengt Ljunggren and George W. Bruyn. ''The Nobel Prize in Medicine and the Karolinska Institute - The Story of Axel Key and Alfred Nobel, Karger, Basel'' 2002. . * R. Kannan. ''MGR - A Life'', Penguin Random House India Ltd, Gurgaon, 2017, .References
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