The Nobel Foundation announced, Indian – American Dr. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, 57, has won this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Venkatraman along with Israeli Ada Yonath and American Thomas Steitz won the Nobel Prize for producing atom-by-atom maps of the mysterious, life-giving ribosome that has allowed researchers to develop powerful new antibiotics. Ramakrishnan used X-ray crystallography – the same method used by the discoverers of DNA – to map the thousands of microscopic atoms that make up a ribosome. Antibiotics based on Rmakrishnan’s model will save lives and decrease suffering. His work has been used to develop new antibiotics which kill germs by blocking their ribosome, while keeping the patient’s ribosome intact.
Dr. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan is the seventh person of Indian Origin to win the Nobel.
Dr. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan was born and schooled at Chidambaram in Tamil Nadu in 1952. He did graduation in B Sc (physics) from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, in 1976, before moving to the US for his Ph.D. from Ohio University.
Well known as ‘Venky’ in India’s scientific circles, Ramakrishnan, has been a visiting lecturer at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore, for many years.
Dr. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, former teacher N S Govindaraj, remembered that the Nobel laureate was a brilliant and sincere student who would reach great heights like Sir C V Raman, who won the Nobel for physics in 1930.
Hearing Ramakrishnan’s selection for the top award, all the academics and students in Chennai expressed their felicity.
The Nobel prizes are given annually for accomplishments in chemistry, physics, medicine, peace, literature and economics. They were first awarded in 1901 in accordance with the 1895 will of Swedish millionaire Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.
Currently, Ramakrishnan is a US scientist at the Medical Research Council’s Molecular biology laboratories in Cambridge.
Dr. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan’s award for Chemistry makes him the fourteenth member of the same Cambridge laboratory to win a Nobel Prize.
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