Venkatraman Ramakrishnan Quotes
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We are all human beings, and our nationality is simply an accident of birth.
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Scientists are not movie stars or politicians who will feel insulted if they are not showered with accolades. Scientists are not interested in accolades.
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I think it's important to give young people the freedom to follow their ideas and pursue their interests.
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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.
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I cannot imagine a more enjoyable place to work than in the Laboratory of Molecular Biology where I work.
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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.
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Science is an international enterprise where discoveries in one part of the world are useful in other parts.
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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.
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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.
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My earlier exposure to physics certainly helped me in the use of biophysical techniques like crystallography, the use of computing, calculations, etc.
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I began studying ribosomes as a postdoctoral fellow in Peter Moore's laboratory in 1978.
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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.
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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.
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People go into science out of curiosity, not to win awards. But scientists are human and have ambitions.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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We benefit tremendously from the E.U. Britain does very well in getting back E.U. money for the amount it puts in.
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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.
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Even the best scientists are often insecure and feel the need for recognition.
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Ultimately, biological phenomena involve molecules, and understanding them involves understanding the underlying chemistry. In my opinion, this is a particularly exciting area of chemistry.
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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.