To me, this is real success. My wife always tells me that only the tree, which bears fruits, has its branches bent because of the weight of the fruits. I have seen this in Govindjee
and Rajniji. They are laden with fruits of success and achievement, find more yet they never boast of them and always treat people humbly. This is true embodiment of greatness. I once read “greatness” is better, but gratefulness is much better. In the Govindjees, I have found this quality, and that too for the first time in my life. They harbor no grievance against any person and are ready to go long ways to help people everywhere in the world. We wish them a long, meaningful, productive, prosperous, peaceful and fruitful life. I wish Vijay (i.e., Victory) to Govindjee on his 80th birthday celebration on October 24, 2013, by the journal Photosynthesis Research (being edited by Suleyman Allakhverdiev (of Russia), Selleck CH5424802 Gerald Edwards (of USA), and Jian-Ren Shen (of Japan)) that he has served with dedication over
the many years. When I started learning about photosynthesis from my father Late Swami Dayal Tewari, who had received his Master’s degree in Botany, from Allahabad University (the same University where Govindjee later received his Master’s degree in Botany, in 1954), I was made aware of Blackman’s law of limiting reactions: it seemed to be the most important concept for the understanding of photosynthesis. For me, Rabinowitch and Govindjee’s 1969 book provided, for the first time, basic understanding about it, and the rest of the many concepts in
photosynthesis, and that in simple terms. I cherished it then and I cherish it now. Over 50 years ago, the 1931 Nobel-laureate filipin Otto Heinrich Warburg discovered a unique stimulatory role of CO2 in the Hill reaction (i.e., O2 evolution accompanied by reduction of an artificial electron acceptor), which, obviously, does not include any carbon fixation pathway. Warburg had used this discovery to support his idea that O2 in photosynthesis originates in CO2. During the 1960s, a large number of researchers attempted to decipher this unique phenomenon, with limited success. In the 1970s, Alan Stemler, Govindjee’s PhD student, perfected methods to get highly reproducible results, and observed, among other things, that the turnover of Photosystem II (PS II) was stimulated by bicarbonate ions (hydrogen carbonate): the effect would be on the donor or the acceptor, or both sides of PS II. In 1975, Thomas Wydrzynski, also Govindjee’s PhD student, discovered that there was a definite bicarbonate effect on the electron acceptor (the plastoquinone) side of PS II. The most recent 1.