My mother, R. Rajalakshmi, taught at Annamalai University in Chidambaram, and during the day, I was well cared for by aunts and grandparents in the usual way of an extended Indian family. – Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
We are all human beings, and our nationality is simply an accident of birth. – Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
I remember reading a ‘Scientific American’ article about the use of new physical techniques – including neutron scattering – as a method for unravelling the structure of the ribosome. I was fascinated. – Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
I was born in 1952 in Chidambaram, an ancient temple town in Tamil Nadu best known for its temple of Nataraja, the lord of dance. – Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
I had an excellent math and physics teacher in high school named T.C. Patel, and in the university, I had truly dedicated professors in both physics and mathematics who gave me a sound foundation with which to pursue graduate studies. – Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
I think we are intrinsically prone to being irrational and superstitious. A lot of it comes from our fear of the unknown and the fear of a lack of control over our fate. – Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
There is no room for political, personal or religious ideologies in science. – Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
It takes a certain amount of courage to tackle very hard problems in science, I now realise. You don’t know what the timescale of your work will be: decades or only a few years. – Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
Science is an international enterprise where discoveries in one part of the world are useful in other parts. – Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
I started working on ribosomes when I was a post doc, in 1978, when it would have been impossible, really, to solve it. But, it was just a fundamental problem in biology. – Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
If you go to a second-rate place, and you are first-rate, it is very difficult to do first-rate work because you do not get that critical feedback you need for first-rate work on a daily basis. – Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
Unusually for an Indian man of his generation, my father, being aware of my mother’s intellectual abilities, encouraged her to go abroad by herself to obtain a Ph.D. – Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
I’m very grateful to have had many brilliant students and post-docs who have worked with me. Potential is often hard to spot, but a key factor is whether they express a genuine interest in the problem and how they have thought about it. – Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
The success in the determination of the high-resolution structures of ribosomal subunits and eventually the whole ribosome was the culmination of decades of effort. – Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
My childhood and adolescence were filled with visiting scientists from both India and abroad, many of whom would stay with us. A life of science struck me as being both interesting and particularly international in its character. – Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
I think it’s important to give young people the freedom to follow their ideas and pursue their interests. – Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
I am very grateful for the dedicated work and intellectual contributions of generations of talented postdocs, students and research assistants without whom none of the work from my laboratory would have been possible. – Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
Science today is a highly collaborative exercise, and to convert it into a contest, as the Nobel does, is a bad way to look at science. – Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
Scientists are not movie stars or politicians who will feel insulted if they are not showered with accolades. Scientists are not interested in accolades. – Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
It’s not about where you were born or where you come from that makes you a good scientist. What you need are good teachers, co-students, facilities. – Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
I began studying ribosomes as a postdoctoral fellow in Peter Moore’s laboratory in 1978. – Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
During the decade following the discovery of the double-helical structure of DNA, the problem of translation – namely, how genetic information is used to synthesize proteins – was a central topic in molecular biology. – Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
I knew the ribosome was going to be the focus of Nobel prizes. It stands at the crossroads of biology, between the gene and what comes out of the gene. But I had convinced myself I was not going to be a winner. – Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
