Venkatraman Ramakrishnan Quotes

If I were to take an undergraduate chemistry exam, I would probably fail.

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.

I began studying ribosomes as a postdoctoral fellow in Peter Moore's laboratory in 1978.

I think it is a mistake to judge science by Nobel Prizes.

We benefit tremendously from the E.U. Britain does very well in getting back E.U. money for the amount it puts in.

It's for scientists to lay out the data and lay out what they think, and then it's for the public to make up its own mind. We don't live in a priesthood where some small group imposes its views on other people - that's not the way that science works, and it's not the way a democratic society should work.

I think it's important to give young people the freedom to follow their ideas and pursue their interests.

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.

Governments and scientists in India need to ensure that politics and religious ideology do not intrude into science. They belong to separate spheres, and if they are not kept separate, it is science in India and the country as a whole that will suffer.

There is no magical formula for winning a Nobel Prize.

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.

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.

Like the women in my family, I've found the women in my lab a hard-nosed, ambitious lot who have gone on to be faculty members at top universities. In my own family, it is my father who is prone to bursting into tears.

Science is an international enterprise where discoveries in one part of the world are useful in other parts.

Nobody has approached me about an offer to work in India. However, I can categorically state that if they did so, I would refuse immediately.

I cannot imagine a more enjoyable place to work than in the Laboratory of Molecular Biology where I work.

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.

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.

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.

You can only go into science because you're interested in it.

Even the best scientists are often insecure and feel the need for recognition.

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.

My earlier exposure to physics certainly helped me in the use of biophysical techniques like crystallography, the use of computing, calculations, etc.

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.

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.

The Royal Society view is completely apolitical: it will judge anything based on the evidence. One of the big strengths of the Society is that is it widely perceived as impartial and above the fray. We'd like to make sure it stays that way.