'Venky' Ramakrishnan: The brain that deciphered proteins

Venky, 57, born in the temple town of Chidambaram in Tamil Nadu, is the seventh Indian or of Indian origin to win the prestigious award.

Born in 1952, Ramakrishnan earned his B.Sc. in Physics (1971) from Baroda University in Gujarat and later migrated to the US to continue his studies where he later got settled and attained US citizenship.

He earned his Ph.D in Physics from Ohio University in the US and later worked as a graduate student at the University of California from 1976-78.

During his stint at the varsity, Ramakrishnan conducted a research with Dr Mauricio Montal, a membrane biochemist and later designed his own 2-year transition from physics to biology.

As a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University, he worked on a neutron-scattering map of the small ribosomal subunit of E Coli. He has been studying ribosome structure ever since.

Ramakrishnan, now a senior scientist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge has authored several important papers in academic journals.