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
We are all human beings, and our nationality is simply an accident of birth.
Science is curiosity, testing and experimenting.
Nobody has approached me about an offer to work in India. However, I can categorically state that if they did so, I would refuse immediately.
Science is an international enterprise where discoveries in one part of the world are useful in other parts.
I think we are intrinsically prone to being irrational and superstitious. A lot of it comes from our fear of the unknown and the fear of a lack of control over our fate.
There is no magical formula for winning a Nobel Prize.
During the decade following the discovery of the double-helical structure of DNA, the problem of translation - namely, how genetic information is used to synthesize proteins - was a central topic in molecular biology.
I was born in 1952 in Chidambaram, an ancient temple town in Tamil Nadu best known for its temple of Nataraja, the lord of dance.
My mother, R. Rajalakshmi, taught at Annamalai University in Chidambaram, and during the day, I was well cared for by aunts and grandparents in the usual way of an extended Indian family.
I am still the same person doing the same science. Why are people so impressed when some academy in Sweden gives an award?
I had an excellent math and physics teacher in high school named T.C. Patel, and in the university, I had truly dedicated professors in both physics and mathematics who gave me a sound foundation with which to pursue graduate studies.
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.
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.
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.
Unusually for an Indian man of his generation, my father, being aware of my mother's intellectual abilities, encouraged her to go abroad by herself to obtain a Ph.D.
My childhood and adolescence were filled with visiting scientists from both India and abroad, many of whom would stay with us. A life of science struck me as being both interesting and particularly international in its character.
I began studying ribosomes as a postdoctoral fellow in Peter Moore's laboratory in 1978.
The success in the determination of the high-resolution structures of ribosomal subunits and eventually the whole ribosome was the culmination of decades of effort.
I am very grateful for the dedicated work and intellectual contributions of generations of talented postdocs, students and research assistants without whom none of the work from my laboratory would have been possible.
I started working on ribosomes when I was a post doc, in 1978, when it would have been impossible, really, to solve it. But, it was just a fundamental problem in biology.
I think it is a mistake to judge science by Nobel Prizes.
I think it's important to give young people the freedom to follow their ideas and pursue their interests.
I'm very grateful to have had many brilliant students and post-docs who have worked with me. Potential is often hard to spot, but a key factor is whether they express a genuine interest in the problem and how they have thought about it.
Scientists are not movie stars or politicians who will feel insulted if they are not showered with accolades. Scientists are not interested in accolades.
My earlier exposure to physics certainly helped me in the use of biophysical techniques like crystallography, the use of computing, calculations, etc.
Ultimately, biological phenomena involve molecules, and understanding them involves understanding the underlying chemistry. In my opinion, this is a particularly exciting area of chemistry.
We live in an increasingly technological world where the issues are quite complex and based on some complicated science.
It's for scientists to lay out the data and lay out what they think, and then it's for the public to make up its own mind. We don't live in a priesthood where some small group imposes its views on other people - that's not the way that science works, and it's not the way a democratic society should work.
The Royal Society view is completely apolitical: it will judge anything based on the evidence. One of the big strengths of the Society is that is it widely perceived as impartial and above the fray. We'd like to make sure it stays that way.
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.
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.
There is no room for political, personal or religious ideologies in science.
Governments and scientists in India need to ensure that politics and religious ideology do not intrude into science. They belong to separate spheres, and if they are not kept separate, it is science in India and the country as a whole that will suffer.
We benefit tremendously from the E.U. Britain does very well in getting back E.U. money for the amount it puts in.
There's a perception out there that the U.K. has become unfriendly to immigrants. Even if that isn't true, the very fact that that is the perception will make people not even want to come.
Like the women in my family, I've found the women in my lab a hard-nosed, ambitious lot who have gone on to be faculty members at top universities. In my own family, it is my father who is prone to bursting into tears.
I cannot imagine a more enjoyable place to work than in the Laboratory of Molecular Biology where I work.
If you go to a second-rate place, and you are first-rate, it is very difficult to do first-rate work because you do not get that critical feedback you need for first-rate work on a daily basis.
You can only go into science because you're interested in it.
If I were to take an undergraduate chemistry exam, I would probably fail.
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.
