Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

"The ribosome does amazing chemistry, but I’m not a chemist…I’ve just learnt enough to work on my problem."

"Dr. Ramakrishnan addressing an audience of 3,000 at the university’s Centenary Auditorium."

"A life of science struck me as being both interesting and international in character."

"Fundamental information about the workings of the cellular machinery at the atomic level and is already being exploited by pharmaceutical companies to make new, more effective antibiotics"

"Scientists work by a combination of intuition and insight in trying to understand a question."

"Many in my family were ambivalent about it, but my mother encouraged me to put aside my fears. Vera and I finally decided to leave Utah, where we were very happy, take a 40 per cent salary cut and mov…"

"You would have to ask a physicist really but I think understanding fundamental problems in physics is very important because they are part of our culture. You just never know what is going to come fro…"

"It is fairly clear that American with recent foreign roots are overrepresented in any classification of Americans who have brought honour and recognition to the United States"