Venkatraman Ramakrishnan Quotes

28 Sourced Quotes

The ribosome does amazing chemistry, but I'm not a chemist…I've just learnt enough to work on my problem.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
Find out what really fascinates you and follow that. Almost anything in nature, if you follow it, you will find a scientific problem. That is a better way to do it than following fads, because what is fashionable today may have been solved or fallen out of fashion once you have become a working scientist.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
This reconnection... has given me great satisfaction. I realise I have inadvertently become a source of inspiration and hope for people in India simply by the fact that I grew up there, went to my local university, but could go on to do well internationally. The Nobel, he says, is not just an affirmation of his past work; it's an encouragement to keep working on interesting problems.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
That is the wrong question to ask…You can't go into science thinking of a Nobel Prize. You can only go into science because you're interested in it.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
A life of science struck me as being both interesting and international in character.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
If I had complained about the prize before I got mine, they may have thought I was anticipating sour grapes. But I complained on the grounds that too many important scientists get missed out for Nobels. 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. On the other hand, I am grateful to the committee for my award. It put the study of ribosome – the cellular machine that turns the blueprint of life into life itself – on front pages round the world.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
Last year, the lecture was held in [an auditorium] with a capacity for just 300 people, and half the seats were empty. What has changed? I am still the same person doing the same science. Why are people so impressed when some academy in Sweden gives an award?

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
I was quite insistent. We have quite a few pranksters in the lab and I thought this was one of them. I even congratulated the man, ironically, on his Swedish accent.

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. I knew ribosomes were a big fundamental problem in science and this was a method for chipping away at it.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
There are already people who are world class in India, for example C. N. R. Rao (who has worked mainly in solid-state and structural chemistry). He is an example of how you can do first rate international work within India. So I would say to Indians — you have it within you to do this (in India).

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
Indians tend to be a little insecure and they should stop being insecure — I have visited India many times and I can tell you questions I get after my talks are as perceptive as anywhere else in the world, including places like Harvard or MIT. It's perfectly fine to take pride that someone from their region has used their background and succeeded. That gives them a positive message that they can do anything that they want.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
Indeed, many of the founding members of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology were immigrants themselves, and they helped to revolutionise modern biology.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
This is an honour that reflects the quality of science supported by the Medical Research Council, in particular at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. In my case, credit should go to the numerous dedicated postdocs, students, associates and colleagues who made crucial contributions to the work.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
People go into science out of curiosity, not to win awards. But scientists are human and have ambitions. Even the best scientists are often insecure and feel the need for recognition.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
No. Geeks make huge advances in society. Newton was the ultimate geek. It should be a compliment.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
In the current debate about immigration, it is worth noting that this award is yet another example of the numerous contributions that immigrants make to British society.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
Many in my family were ambivalent about it, but my mother encouraged me to put aside my fears. Vera (my wife) and I finally decided to leave Utah, where we were very happy, take a 40 per cent salary cut and move to the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
You would have to ask a physicist really but I think understanding fundamental problems in physics is very important because they are part of our culture. You just never know what is going to come from it. If you had told Isaac Newton about spaceships and satellites that arise from his laws of gravity, it would have been science fiction to him.

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. Or your approach may be fatally flawed and doomed to fail. Or you could get scooped just as you are finalising your work. It is very stressful.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
Scientists work by a combination of intuition and insight in trying to understand a question.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
Now many excellent scientists in India are doing really first rate work and it should not matter when the next Indian Nobel Prize is because they are doing very good work — that is what matters and the more you have this infrastructure, with good scientists within India, eventually someone will get a Nobel Prize for work done within India.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
I think it is the ability to tackle difficult problems in a sort of stable and supportive environment. I think that is the real key to it.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
I then got a PhD in physics [from Ohio University] though it was not a very good one.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
It's an absolutely good thing. I can think of one even better thing for young people, especially in India. It shows them you can study in India, get your basic education in India and you can (then) do whatever you want after that. That's a very important message.

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
My own lab has two Chinese, a Malaysian, a Canadian, an American, a German, it has had all sorts of people. And it's actually fun because people from different countries come together, they have cultural exchanges, they learn more about each others' countries and way of life. Science is a great international mixer, so the idea that it is a sort of cricket match where our team won — that simply is a wrong way of looking at scientific discovery.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
Scientists are trained to be rational and we are not trained to interact with people and develop social skills. Politics is about being able to convince people. Scientists could do with learning how to do that.

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, [he said]. I honestly don't think my roots have much to do with it. I'm sure this won't make me popular, but this is what I think.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan