Indian-American Venkatraman Ramakrishnan made a billion people back home proud by winning the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for 2009 for his ground-breaking work on ribosome, a cellular machine that makes proteins.

Born in 1952, in the temple town of Chidambaram in Tamil Nadu, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan is the seventh Indian or of Indian origin to win the prestigious award. Passing out his B.Sc. in Physics in 1971 from M S University, Baroda, Gujarat, Ramakrishnan popularly called Venky migrated to the US to continue his education and later made America his home and acquired the citizenship.

The scientist pursued his Ph.D in Physics from Ohio University and worked as a graduate student at the University of California from 1976-78. Ramakrishnan joined hands with Dr Mauricio Montal, a membrane bio-chemist, for joint research and soon made a switch from physics to biology in a period of two-years.

Pursuing his Ph.D at Yale University, Ramakrishnan worked on a neutron-scattering map of the small ribosomal subunit of E Coli. Attached to the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, Ramakrishnan has authored several important papers in academic journals.

The professor and his colleagues published the structure of the small ribosomal subunit of Thermus thermophilus, a heat-stable bacterium related to one found in the Yellowstone hot springs in August 26, 2000 issue of Nature. Since then, he has been prolifically contributing to many journals.

Just like a child is tied to the mother’s umbilical cord even after growing up, Ramakrishnan has kept his links with his University in Vadodara. During the recent 2002 riots, Ramakrishnan helped the minority girls and has several times guest lectured at the varsity. He still remembers his old servant and makes inquiries about him through friends. He came forward and asked his friend Professor JS Bandukwala of MSU’s physics department to leave Vadodara and settle with him in the US after some miscreants attacked his house during the 2002 riots.       

On learning about Venky’s Nobel award, Bandukwala said that the professor always liked to work in different fields and it was not surprising to find him researching in chemistry after graduating in physics.

Recalling his meritorious student, Prof M S Govindarajan, who taught him Physics at pre-university level at Annamalai University in Chidambaram, said that he was extremely happy to hear that Ramakrishnan had won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Meanwhile, Ramakrishnan’s proud father, C V Ramakrishnan said that his son would come home straight and immerse himself in studies. “All work and no play had earned him the most coveted prize in the world,” senior Ramakrishan said, adding that his son followed his heart, otherwise India would have missed a Nobel award.

Ramakrishnan won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome. He shares the prize along with Thomas A. Steitz of Yale University and Ada E. Yonath of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.

Ramakrishnan, Steitz and Yonath proved what the ribosome looks like and how it functions at an atomic level using a visualisation method called X-ray crystallography to map the position of each of the hundreds of thousands of atoms that make up the ribosome.

After the announcement of the award, Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, Medical Research Council Chief Executive, said that they were absolutely delighted that Ramakrishnan’s work had been recognised with the 2009 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. “Venky’s award is the Medical Research Council’s 29th Nobel Prize and is a reflection of the excellent work that the scientists do. The MRC is committed to long-term support of the difficult areas of basic science as exemplified by Venky’s success. It is only on the back of such discoveries that we can continue to drive translation into benefits for human health,” Borysiewicz said.

Ramakrishnan is wedded to Vera Rosenberry, author and illustrator of children’s books and has a step-daughter, Tania Kapka, a doctor in Oregon, and a son, Raman Ramakrishnan, cellist in New York.

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