G.N. Ramachandran ('G' stands for Gopalasamudram, his native town, and 'N' stands for Narayana Iyer, the name of his father) was born on October 8, 1922, in a small town not far from Cochin on the southwestern coast of India. His father was a Professor of Mathematics at a local college and thus had considerable influence in shaping Ram's interest in mathematics. After completing his school years, Ramachandran graduated in 1942 as the top-ranking student in the B.Sc. (Honors) Physics course of the University of Madras.

In 1942, Ramachandran joined the Master's program in Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore but was soon brought into the Physics stream by the head of the Physics Department, Sir C.V. Raman, who was awarded the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the Raman effect. (Until Raman discovered this effect, it was generally believed that scattered light can have its frequency shifted only towards the red end of the spectrum, towards lesser energy. Raman discovered shifts in the frequency of scattered light towards the blue end of the spectrum, towards greater energy, violating common sense and conventional wisdom. Raman's discovery was one of the important tools that dethroned the deterministic world of classical physics and launched the probabilistic world of quantum physics.) Under the guidance of Raman, Ramachandran continued in Physics, did his post-graduate research in the areas of optics and X-ray topography of diamonds, and obtained a D.Sc. degree in 1947. This degree is equivalent to a Ph.D., the difference being that the award of a Ph.D. requires submitting a thesis on a research project under a supervisor who also suggested the project for the thesis, whereas a thesis for the D.Sc. degree involves mainly the submission of a collection of papers describing the independent and original research work of a candidate.

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