Wow! It is proud that from my state there is one Nobel Prize winner. The Nobel Prize winner Venkatraman Ramakrishnan with two other scientist visited the University of Madras (Guindy campus). During his visit to Chennai in late 2008, Ramakrishnan had interacted with both faculty and students.
Indian-born Venkatraman Ramakrishnan on Wednesday visited the University of Madras (Guindy campus) to say Three Cheers!. It is a rare coincidence that Venky’ Ramakrishnan, Thomas Steitz and Ada Yonath are among the more than a dozen Nobel laureates who had visited our department over the past five decades. Steitz and Yonath had both delivered lectures at the university in January 1978,” said a proud professor D Velmurugan, head of the department, pulling out a bound copy of the proceedings of an international symposium on Biomolecular Structure, Conformation, Function and Evolution,’ published in 1978.
Ramakrishnan had visited the university twice once in 2002 and lately in December 2008 to deliver a memorial and endowment lecture instituted in the name of the eminent molecular biophysicist G N Ramachandran, the founder of department, who had missed the Nobel narrowly. However, when Ramakrishnan came to deliver the endowment lecture, he had already made significant progress in the field of crystallography and ribosome.
Normally scientists don’t share with others the progress in any study that they are undertaking. However, when Ramakrishnan was here he was quite open about his research in crystallography and ribosome and the progress made, which is a rare quality recalled G Shanmugam, former head of department of crystallography and biophysics.