Venkatraman Ramakrishnan - Scientists Quotes

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

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
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
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