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" 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
Mother
Day
Way
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" I think it is a mistake to judge science by Nobel Prizes. "
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" 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. "
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" Ultimately, biological phenomena involve molecules, and understanding them involves understanding the underlying chemistry. In my opinion, this is a particularly exciting area of chemistry. "
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" My earlier exposure to physics certainly helped me in the use of biophysical techniques like crystallography, the use of computing, calculations, etc. "
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Use
" 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
Her
Man
Go
" 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
Character
Science
Childhood
" I began studying ribosomes as a postdoctoral fellow in Peter Moore's laboratory in 1978. "
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
Fellow
Began
Studying
" 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
Problem
Working
Biology
" 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
Problems
Know
Science
" 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
Teacher
School
Foundation
" 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
Biology
Winner
Myself
" 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
Biology
Information
Discovery
" Science is an international enterprise where discoveries in one part of the world are useful in other parts. "
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
Other
Useful
Where
" I cannot imagine a more enjoyable place to work than in the Laboratory of Molecular Biology where I work. "
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
Work
Biology
Imagine
" 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
Feel
Stars
Will
" 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
Good
Come
Born
" 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
Exercise
Today
Bad
" Science is curiosity, testing and experimenting. "
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
Testing
Curiosity
Science
" 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
Grateful
I Am
Possible
" 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
Thought
Grateful
Problem
" We are all human beings, and our nationality is simply an accident of birth. "
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
Accident
Nationality
Our
" 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. "
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
Mind
Data
Live
" 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
Success
Whole
Effort
" 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
Reading
American
Structure