Prof Venky Ramakrishnan of Cambridge gets 2009 Chemistry Nobel

Prof Venky Ramakrishnan of Cambridge University gets the Chemistry Nobel for 2009 for the structure and function of Ribosome

He is the fifth India-born scientist to win Nobel Prize. Other than Sir CV Raman who won the Nobel Prize in 1930 for molecular splitting of light and Raman Effect, the other winners are naturalized citizens of USA

• Prof Hargobind Khorana won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in the year 1968; he was a molecular biologist at the University of Wisconsin – Madison then
• Prof Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983 for the theoretical structure and evolution of stars; he was at the University of Chicago then
• Prof Amartya Sen won Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998 for his contribution to welfare economics; he was at Harvard University then

Interestingly, just in the afternoon Prof PK Ghosh (Retd) of IITK gave a talk in IIIT-B about biological molecules and mass spectrometry where he talked about Ribosome (I heard it for the first time!)

Another coincidence; Dr Venky Ramakrishnan happens to be the cousin of Professor SV Sankaran’s wife; Prof Sankaran currently with SAP is an active IEEE Office-bearer in Bangalore; he spent 3 years at IIIT-B!