27 Facts About Venki Ramakrishnan

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan was born on 1952 and is a British-American structural biologist.

Venki Ramakrishnan shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Thomas A Steitz and Ada Yonath for research on the structure and function of ribosomes.

Venki Ramakrishnan served as President of the Royal Society from 2015 to 2020.

Venki Ramakrishnan was born in 1952 in Chidambaram in Cuddalore district of Tamil Nadu, India.

Rajalakshmi Venki Ramakrishnan were both scientists, and his father was head of the department of biochemistry at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda.

Venki Ramakrishnan's mother obtained a PhD in psychology from McGill University in 1959, completing it in only 18 months, and was mentored, among others, by Donald O Hebb.

Venki Ramakrishnan has one sibling, his younger sister Lalita Venki Ramakrishnan, who is professor of immunology and infectious diseases at the department of medicine, University of Cambridge, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Venki Ramakrishnan moved to Vadodara in Gujarat at the age of three, where he had his entire schooling at the Convent of Jesus and Mary, except for a year and a half which he and his family spent in Adelaide, Australia.

Venki Ramakrishnan began work on ribosomes as a postdoctoral fellow with Peter Moore at Yale University.

Venki Ramakrishnan continued to work on ribosomes from 1983 to 1995 as a staff scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

In 1999, Venki Ramakrishnan's laboratory published a 5.5 angstrom resolution structure of the 30S subunit.

Venki Ramakrishnan is known for his past work on histone and chromatin structure.

Venki Ramakrishnan was elected a Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization in 2002, a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2003, and a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences in 2004.

In 2007, Venki Ramakrishnan was awarded the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine and the Datta Lectureship and Medal of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies.

Venki Ramakrishnan received India's second highest civilian honor, the Padma Vibhushan, in 2010.

In 2008, Venki Ramakrishnan won the Heatley Medal of the British Biochemical Society, and became a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge and a foreign Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy.

Venki Ramakrishnan has been a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and an Honorary Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences since 2010.

Venki Ramakrishnan has received honorary degrees from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, University of Utah, Ohio University and University of Cambridge.

Venki Ramakrishnan is an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Somerville College, Oxford, and The Queen's College, Oxford.

Venki Ramakrishnan was knighted in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to molecular biology, but does not generally use the title "Sir".

In 2017, Venki Ramakrishnan received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.

Venki Ramakrishnan was included as one of 25 Greatest Global Living Indians by NDTV Channel, India on 14 December 2013.

Venki Ramakrishnan is internationally recognised for determination of the atomic structure of the 30S ribosomal subunit.

Venki Ramakrishnan has made substantial contributions to understanding how chromatin is organised, particularly the structure of linker histones and their role in higher order folding.

Venki Ramakrishnan was made a Member of the Order of Merit in 2022.

In 1975, Venki Ramakrishnan married Vera Rosenberry, an author and illustrator of children's books.

Venki Ramakrishnan has a step-daughter, Tanya Kapka, a physician specializing in public health and health-care delivery to under-served communities; and a son, Raman Ramakrishnan, a cellist specializing in chamber music and professor at Bard College in New York State.