Professor Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan (‘MS’ to his numerous friends and colleagues throughout the world)started his epoch-making research career with cytogenetic studies in potato in 1949 at the Agricultural University, Wageningen, the Netherlands, and later at Cambridge University, England where he obtained his Ph D in Genetics in 1952.
He did his post-doctoral research in Wisconsin,USA. All these were from late 1940s until mid-1950s. In a span of 6 to 7 years, he obtained the Ph D degree of Cambridge University and published significant original research papers in journals such as Genetics, Nature, Journal of Heredity, Genetica, Euphytica, Bibliographica Genetica, American Journal of Botany, American Potato Journal, etc., wherein he elucidated the mechanisms of speciation in the genus Solanum, section Tuberarium. Understanding the genomic affinity of the cultivated tetraploid potato 2n = 4x = 48 (Solanum tuberosum),
with wild diploid (2n = 2x = 24) enabled inter-specific hybridization and transfer of genes to confer resistance against abiotic and biotic stresses to potato. When he was a young research scholar in the Wisconsin University (USA), he developed a potato hybrid carrying the frost-resistance gene from a tetraploid wild relative S. acaule
(2n = 48). Later, this hybrid potato material was used to develop a frost-resistant
potato variety called ‘Alaska Frostless’. Although he was offered an attractive research-cum-teaching position in Wisconsin, MS chose to return to his motherland
where he had no job then.