Ramakrishnan wins Nobel prize in Chemistry

In a rare honour for Indian scientific community, Indian-born American scientist Venkatraman Ramakrishnan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the year 2009. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas Steitz and Ada Yonath won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on how the DNA code is translated into life.

The scientists will share the 10 million-kronor ($1.4 million) award, the Nobel Assembly said at a press conference in Stockholm today.

Professor Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, a senior scientist at the MRC Laborartory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge, is Tamilnadu born and millions of Indians are happy after knowing that Venkatraman wins Nobel prize.

Born in 1952 in Chidambaram, Ramakrishnan shares the Nobel prize with Thomas E Steitz (US) and Ada E Yonath (Israel) for their "studies of the structure and function of the ribosome".

Ramakrishnan earned his B.Sc. in Physics (1971) from Baroda University and his Ph.D. in Physics (1976) from Ohio University.

He moved into biology at the University of California, San Diego, where he took a year of classes, then conducted research with Dr Mauricio Montal, a membrane biochemist.

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