Venki Ramakrishnan, Ph.D. | Academy of Achievement

<!doctype html> <html lang="en-US"> <head><script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/bundle-playback.js?v=HxkREWBo" charset="utf-8"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/wombat.js?v=txqj7nKC" charset="utf-8"></script> <script>window.RufflePlayer=window.RufflePlayer||{};window.RufflePlayer.config={"autoplay":"on","unmuteOverlay":"hidden"};</script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/ruffle/ruffle.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> __wm.init("https://web.archive.org/web"); __wm.wombat("https://achievement.org/achiever/venki-ramakrishnan-ph-d/","20200917235358","https://web.archive.org/","web","/_static/", "1600386838"); </script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_static/css/banner-styles.css?v=S1zqJCYt" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_static/css/iconochive.css?v=3PDvdIFv" />  <meta charset="utf-8"> <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="57x57" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-57x57.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="114x114" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-114x114.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="72x72" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-72x72.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="144x144" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-144x144.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="60x60" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-60x60.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="120x120" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-120x120.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="76x76" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-76x76.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="152x152" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-152x152.png"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-196x196.png" sizes="196x196"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-96x96.png" sizes="96x96"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-32x32.png" sizes="32x32"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-16x16.png" sizes="16x16"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-128.png" sizes="128x128"/> <meta name="application-name" content="Academy of Achievement"/> <meta name="msapplication-TileColor" content="#000000"/> <meta name="msapplication-TileImage" content="https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-144x144.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square70x70logo" content="https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-70x70.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square150x150logo" content="https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-150x150.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-wide310x150logo" content="https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-310x150.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square310x310logo" content="https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-310x310.png"/> <link href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358cs_/https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Source+Sans+Pro:400,600,400italic,600italic,700,700italic&display=swap" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">  <title>Venki Ramakrishnan, Ph.D. | Academy of Achievement</title> <meta name="description" content="Venki Ramakrishnan was born in India to a family of scientists. He had already earned a Ph.D. in physics when his attention turned to molecular biology. As a postdoctoral fellow at Yale, he began his research on the structure and function of the ribosome, a major structure in all cells that interprets genetic instructions to produce proteins. At first, few appreciated the value of his research. He applied to roughly 50 universities in the United States before he secured his first academic appointment. A move to Cambridge University in 1999 led to major breakthroughs in his research. By 2007, his laboratory had determined the atomic structure of the entire ribosome, discoveries that not only yield insight into protein synthesis but expand our understanding of the antibiotic function. His research, which has appeared in the journals Nature, Science, and Cell, brought him the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. A group leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, he is now serving as President of the Royal Society, the world’s oldest scientific association."/> <meta name="robots" content="index, follow"/> <meta name="googlebot" content="index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1"/> <meta name="bingbot" content="index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1"/> <link rel="canonical" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/venki-ramakrishnan-ph-d/"/> <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US"/> <meta property="og:type" content="article"/> <meta property="og:title" content="Venki Ramakrishnan, Ph.D. | Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="og:description" content="Venki Ramakrishnan was born in India to a family of scientists. He had already earned a Ph.D. in physics when his attention turned to molecular biology. As a postdoctoral fellow at Yale, he began his research on the structure and function of the ribosome, a major structure in all cells that interprets genetic instructions to produce proteins. At first, few appreciated the value of his research. He applied to roughly 50 universities in the United States before he secured his first academic appointment. A move to Cambridge University in 1999 led to major breakthroughs in his research. By 2007, his laboratory had determined the atomic structure of the entire ribosome, discoveries that not only yield insight into protein synthesis but expand our understanding of the antibiotic function. His research, which has appeared in the journals <em>Nature</em>, <em>Science,</em> and <em>Cell</em>, brought him the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. A group leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, he is now serving as President of the Royal Society, the world’s oldest scientific association."/> <meta property="og:url" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/venki-ramakrishnan-ph-d/"/> <meta property="og:site_name" content="Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="article:modified_time" content="2018-11-14T14:45:50+00:00"/> <meta property="og:image" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/ramakrishnan-Feature-Image.jpg"/> <meta property="og:image:width" content="2800"/> <meta property="og:image:height" content="1120"/> <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary"/> <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@achievers1961"/> <meta name="twitter:site" content="@achievers1961"/> <script type="application/ld+json" class="yoast-schema-graph">{"@context":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/#organization","name":"Academy of Achievement","url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/","sameAs":["https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://www.linkedin.com/company/american-academy-of-achievement","https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChe_87uh1H-NIMf3ndTjPFw","https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_of_Achievement","https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://twitter.com/achievers1961"],"logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/#logo","inLanguage":"en-US","url":"/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/12.png","width":1200,"height":630,"caption":"Academy of Achievement"},"image":{"@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/#logo"}},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/#website","url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/","name":"Academy of Achievement","description":"A museum of living history","publisher":{"@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/search/{search_term_string}","query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/venki-ramakrishnan-ph-d/#primaryimage","inLanguage":"en-US","url":"/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/ramakrishnan-Feature-Image.jpg","width":2800,"height":1120},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/venki-ramakrishnan-ph-d/#webpage","url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/venki-ramakrishnan-ph-d/","name":"Venki Ramakrishnan, Ph.D. | Academy of Achievement","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/venki-ramakrishnan-ph-d/#primaryimage"},"datePublished":"2018-04-05T08:28:19+00:00","dateModified":"2018-11-14T14:45:50+00:00","description":"Venki Ramakrishnan was born in India to a family of scientists. He had already earned a Ph.D. in physics when his attention turned to molecular biology. As a postdoctoral fellow at Yale, he began his research on the structure and function of the ribosome, a major structure in all cells that interprets genetic instructions to produce proteins. At first, few appreciated the value of his research. He applied to roughly 50 universities in the United States before he secured his first academic appointment. A move to Cambridge University in 1999 led to major breakthroughs in his research. By 2007, his laboratory had determined the atomic structure of the entire ribosome, discoveries that not only yield insight into protein synthesis but expand our understanding of the antibiotic function. His research, which has appeared in the journals\u00a0Nature, Science, and Cell, \u00a0brought him the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. A group leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, he is now serving as President of the Royal Society, the world\u2019s oldest scientific association.","inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/venki-ramakrishnan-ph-d/"]}]}]}</script>  <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="//web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://s.w.org/"/> <link rel="stylesheet" href="/web/20200917235358cs_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/dist/styles/main-fb4131a9f6.css"> <script>if (document.location.protocol != "https:") {document.location = document.URL.replace(/^http:/i, "https:");}</script><script src="/web/20200917235358js_/https://achievement.org/wp-includes/js/jquery/jquery.js?ver=1.12.4-wp" id="jquery-core-js"></script> <script async src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358js_/https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=UA-2384096-1"></script> <script> 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role="document"> <div class="content"> <main class="main"> <div class="feature-area__container"> <header class="feature-area feature-area--has-image ratio-container ratio-container--feature"> <figure class="feature-box"> <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image feature-area__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/ramakrishnan-Feature-Image.jpg [(max-width:544px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/04/ramakrishnan-Feature-Image-1400x560.jpg [(max-width:992px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/04/ramakrishnan-Feature-Image.jpg"></div> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <figcaption class="feature-area__text ratio-container__text container"> <div class="feature-area__text-inner text-white"> <h2 class="serif-8 feature-area__text-subhead back"><a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever">All achievers</a></h2> <h1 class="serif-1 entry-title feature-area__text-headline">Venki Ramakrishnan, Ph.D.</h1> <h5 class="sans-6 feature-area__blurb">Nobel Prize in Chemistry</h5> </div> </figcaption> </div> </div> </figure> </header> </div>  <nav class="in-page-nav row fixedsticky"> <ul class="nav text-xs-center clearfix" role="tablist"> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link active" data-toggle="tab" href="#biography" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Biography">Biography</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#profile" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Profile">Profile</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#interview" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Interview">Interview</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#gallery" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Gallery">Gallery</a> </li> </ul> </nav> <article class="post-44113 achiever type-achiever status-publish has-post-thumbnail hentry careers-biochemist careers-cell-biologist careers-physicist careers-scientist"> <div class="entry-content container clearfix">  <div class="tab-content"> <div class="tab-pane active" id="biography" role="tabpanel"> <section class="achiever--biography"> <div class="row"> <header class="editorial-article__header col-md-8 col-md-offset-2 text-xs-center"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> <h3 class="serif-3 quote-marks">Some science you’re doing, something that’s so far out and no one else cares, but you are interested in it. And that’s, I think, the best kind of science to do — where you’re doing something no one else cares about but you really feel is interesting.</h3> </header> </div> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar clearfix"> <h2 class="serif-3 p-b-1">President of the Royal Society</h2> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> April 1, 1952 </dd> </div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><figure id="attachment_44182" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-44182" style="width: 481px" class="wp-caption alignright"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-44182 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/COLLEGE.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-44182 lazyload" alt="" width="481" height="533" data-sizes="(max-width: 481px) 100vw, 481px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/COLLEGE.jpg 481w, /web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/COLLEGE-343x380.jpg 343w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/COLLEGE.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-44182" class="wp-caption-text">1975: 23-year-old Venki Ramakrishnan, a graduate student at Ohio University’s physics department, the same year he married fine arts student Vera Rosenberry.</figcaption></figure> <p>Venkatraman Ramakrishnan was born in Chidambaram, India. His parents were both scientists — his father was a biochemist, his mother a psychologist.  At the time of his birth, his father was working in the United States. He was still a small child when his mother spent 18 months in Canada earning a graduate degree.  When Venki, as he prefers to be called, was three years old, the family settled in Baroda (now known as Vadodara) in the state of Gujarat, where his father took up an appointment as head of the newly created Department of Biochemistry at the University of Baroda. The move posed a hardship for the young boy as it meant making a switch from his mother tongue, Tamil, to the local language, Gujarati. His parents enrolled him in an English-language school. Although the feeling of being an outsider has remained with him through the many moves of his subsequent career, his command of the English language has served him well. His fourth and fifth grades were spent in Australia, and he advanced two grades ahead of his age cohort in primary school.</p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan grew up surrounded by scientists and naturally looked on science as a potential career for himself as well. At age 16, he entered the University of Baroda. He found the teaching of life sciences — botany and zoology — tedious and old-fashioned and was more excited by the newly introduced physics curriculum. He graduated with honors in physics just as his parents were preparing to take a sabbatical year at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He followed his parents to the United States but rather than undertake further undergraduate training as the University of Illinois would have required, he enrolled in the graduate program at Ohio University.  He was only 19 when he arrived in the United States, little knowing he would spend the next 28 years of his life there.</p> <figure id="attachment_44195" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-44195" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-44195 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/nature-cover-300.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-44195 lazyload" alt="" width="1200" height="1596" data-sizes="(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/nature-cover-300.jpg 1200w, /web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/nature-cover-300-286x380.jpg 286w, /web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/nature-cover-300-571x760.jpg 571w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/nature-cover-300.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-44195" class="wp-caption-text">2000: Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan’s high-resolution structure of 30S ribosomal subunit, published by <em>Nature</em>, based on data collected at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS), the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory, and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF).</figcaption></figure> <p>His interest in physics waned in Ohio, but he made a more important discovery when he met Vera Rosenberry, an art student with one small child from a previous marriage. The two became inseparable, and by age 23, Venki Ramakrishnan had a wife and a five-year-old stepdaughter, Tanya. Newly inspired to persevere in his scientific career, he completed his dissertation and received his physics degree in 1976, a month before the birth of his son, Raman.</p> <p>By this time, he saw few opportunities for fundamental discoveries in physics, and his attention had turned to biology. He explored the possibility of undertaking postdoctoral work in biochemistry at Yale. He made contact with two scientists there, Don Engelman and Tom Steitz, who would play a significant role in his subsequent career. But at the time, he felt he lacked the background in biology to plunge directly into postdoctoral work. Instead, he enrolled in the biology department of the University of California, San Diego, ostensibly to pursue a second graduate degree.</p> <p>While in San Diego, he read an article in <em>Scientific American</em> by Engelman and a Yale colleague, Peter Moore, about their study of the ribosome, a structure present in every living cell that both manufactures proteins and arranges them according to the sequence encoded by the DNA molecules within the nucleus.  Ramakrishnan was fascinated. After two years in San Diego, he believed he had acquired sufficient preparation in biology to undertake postdoctoral research. He contacted Engelman at Yale and was offered a postdoctoral position. Only two years after arriving in San Diego, the young family pulled up stakes and moved to New Haven.</p> <figure id="attachment_44201" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-44201" style="width: 2127px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-44201 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-AP_091007014391.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-44201 lazyload" alt="" width="2127" height="3000" data-sizes="(max-width: 2127px) 100vw, 2127px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-AP_091007014391.jpg 2127w, /web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-AP_091007014391-269x380.jpg 269w, /web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-AP_091007014391-539x760.jpg 539w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-AP_091007014391.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-44201" class="wp-caption-text">2009: Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan, Senior Scientist and Group Leader at Structural Studies Division, sits in his lab at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, England. (© AP Photo/Alastair Grant)</figcaption></figure> <p>Working in Peter Moore’s lab at Yale, Ramakrishnan participated in mapping the location of proteins within the 30S subunit, one of two major components of the ribosome. As part of his research, Ramakrishnan took part in work being done at Brookhaven National Laboratory using neutron scattering to observe the position of molecules in living cells.  As he became more deeply involved in this research, he came to believe that a different technique, x-ray crystallography, could be applied to this work with superior results.</p> <p>In X-ray crystallography, a crystallized form of the substance to be analyzed is struck with an x-ray, causing the constituent atoms of the substance to scatter. By analyzing the pattern of radiation emerging from the crystal, scientists can determine exactly how the atoms are positioned within the crystallized substance. The work of creating such crystals is difficult, and experiments must be repeated many times to obtain consistent results. Crystallizing the molecules of organic matter, such as the proteins of living things, carries still greater complications, and the application of the technique to biology did not appear promising to everyone, but Venki Ramakrishnan saw an extraordinary opportunity in the technology and was determined to pursue it.</p> <figure id="attachment_44206" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-44206" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-44206 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-GettyImages-94099359.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-44206 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1517" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-GettyImages-94099359.jpg 2280w, /web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-GettyImages-94099359-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-GettyImages-94099359-760x506.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-GettyImages-94099359.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-44206" class="wp-caption-text">December 7, 2009:  Nobel laureates American Thomas Steitz (L), Israeli Ada Yonath (C), and British-American Venki Ramakrishnan give a press conference at the Royal Swedish Academy in Stockholm. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded jointly “for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome.” (Olivier Morin/AFP/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <p>When he completed his appointment at Yale, Ramakrishnan applied to a number of American universities for teaching and research positions, but his unusual résumé attracted no replies. The idea of a physicist-turned-biologist with experience in neutron scattering and an interest in crystallography was a hard one for many institutions to grasp, and even his record of postdoctoral work at Yale failed to impress readers underwhelmed by his previous academic credentials. In all, Venki Ramakrishnan applied to over 50 institutions without being invited for a single interview. After a false start at Oak Ridge Laboratory in Tennessee, he finally found a congenial appointment at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Vera and the children prepared for yet another move, from rural Tennessee to suburban Long Island.</p> <p>At Brookhaven, Ramakrishnan was at last free to pursue his own line of research.  His work on the ribosome at Brookhaven led to his first independent scientific paper, a single-author publication in the journal <em>Science</em>. Meanwhile, progress in genome sequencing and in cloning was accelerating the pace of biomolecular research.   To progress further in his work, Ramakrishnan believed he needed to master the crystallization techniques practiced at the MRC (Medical Research Council) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) at Cambridge University in England. Ramakrishnan and his family spent his sabbatical year at Cambridge, supported by Brookhaven and a Guggenheim Fellowship.</p> <p>On his return to Brookhaven, after completing his last neutron scattering experiments on other subjects, Ramakrishnan began to focus entirely on the crystallography of ribosomal proteins and factors. His experience at Cambridge had made him impatient with the strictures of a government-run national laboratory. He applied to LMB in Cambridge for a permanent position but nothing was available at the time.  Instead, he accepted an offer from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. The job came with a 30-percent salary increase and a talented team of colleagues and assistants.</p> <figure id="attachment_44211" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-44211" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-44211 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-GettyImages-95060056-1.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-44211 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="3498" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-GettyImages-95060056-1.jpg 2280w, /web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-GettyImages-95060056-1-248x380.jpg 248w, /web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-GettyImages-95060056-1-495x760.jpg 495w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-GettyImages-95060056-1.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-44211" class="wp-caption-text">December 10, 2009: Dr. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan receives the Nobel Prize in Chemistry from King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden during the Nobel Prize award ceremony at Stockholm Concert Hall. (Jonas Ekstromer/Getty)</figcaption></figure> <p>Life in Utah suited the Ramakrishnans, who enjoyed hiking in the surrounding mountains.  Ramakrishnan had set himself a specific challenge, solving the entire molecular structure of the ribosome, starting with its smaller component, the 30S subunit he had first studied at Yale.  Although he enjoyed the support of an excellent team at Utah, the project was an ambitious one for the university’s resources and facilities. While on his way to a conference in Sweden, he met again with sympathetic colleagues at Cambridge.  A position had opened up at the LMB and Cambridge had resources and facilities better suited to a head-on assault on the ribosome. Ramakrishnan was convinced that this project was the most important work he could pursue in his field, and he was well aware that another pioneer in the field, Ada Yonath of Israel’s Weizmann Institute, might soon turn her attention to the same goal.  Accepting the job at Cambridge would mean taking a 40-percent pay cut and giving up the outdoor lifestyle he and Vera enjoyed in Utah.  It would also mean living thousands of miles from Tanya and Raman, now grown and pursuing careers of their own, Tanya in medicine, Raman in classical music.  Vera agreed to the move, on condition that they remain in Cambridge and make no further moves to advance his career.  In April 1999, Venki and Vera moved to Cambridge to begin their new life.</p> <p>During his last months in Utah, Ramakrishnan had narrowed his focus to the 30S subunit, creating a crystallized form of 30S to which he and his team could apply refraction technology and analyze its molecular structure. In England, he continued to send work to colleagues in Utah for analysis.  This transatlantic, transcontinental teamwork paid off. Within a few months of his arrival in Cambridge, Ramakrishnan could report a major breakthrough, the entire central domain of the 30S subunit. He shocked the audience at an international ribosome conference in Denmark with his findings, published in <em>Nature</em> in August 1999.</p> <figure id="attachment_44219" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-44219" style="width: 1752px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-44219 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/GettyImages-98163786.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-44219 lazyload" alt="" width="1752" height="2016" data-sizes="(max-width: 1752px) 100vw, 1752px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/GettyImages-98163786.jpg 1752w, /web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/GettyImages-98163786-330x380.jpg 330w, /web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/GettyImages-98163786-660x760.jpg 660w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/GettyImages-98163786.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-44219" class="wp-caption-text">2010: Indian President Pratibha Devisingh Patil presents the Padma Vibhushan Award to Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan for his contribution to the nation, during the Padma Awards at New Delhi’s Presidential House. (© Raveendran)</figcaption></figure> <p>As he continued his effort to map the entire 30S subunit, Ramakrishnan was well aware that his old Yale colleagues Tom Steitz and Peter Moore, as well as Ada Yonath, were all working on the same problem. The only laboratory where his team could harvest the data they sought from the crystals they had created was the beamline at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.  In February 2000, Ramakrishnan and a team of four booked time there, working around the clock in 12-hour shifts. The task was grueling, but when the results appeared, Ramakrishnan could hardly contain his excitement.  Within weeks, they had built a complete atomic model of the 30S subunit.</p> <p>Ramakrishnan and his team were also able to observe the interaction of the ribosome with three different antibiotics. His research led to the high-resolution crystallization of the entire ribosome. Many more developments have followed from his research, but among the most important is a clear insight into how antibiotics work to disable the ribosomes of bacteria while sparing those of the human host. This discovery will enable the creation of more and better antibiotics and possibly bypass the risk of creating antibiotic-resistant microbes.</p> <p>Beginning in 2002, Dr. Ramakrishnan, who holds dual British and American nationality, began to travel frequently to the land of his birth. He now lectures a few months a year at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. In 2002, he also became a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and the following year was named a Fellow of the Royal Society. Founded in 1660, the Royal Society is the world’s oldest independent scientific association. Ramakrishnan is also a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and is a Foreign Fellow of the National Science Academy of India. He received a major European scientific honor, the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine, in 2007.</p> <figure id="attachment_41417" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-41417" style="width: 1975px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-41417 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/venki-Golden-Plate-Awards-Council-TEMPLATE.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-41417 size-full lazyload" alt="" width="1975" height="1425" data-sizes="(max-width: 1975px) 100vw, 1975px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/venki-Golden-Plate-Awards-Council-TEMPLATE.jpg 1975w, /web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/venki-Golden-Plate-Awards-Council-TEMPLATE-380x274.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/venki-Golden-Plate-Awards-Council-TEMPLATE-760x548.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/venki-Golden-Plate-Awards-Council-TEMPLATE.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-41417" class="wp-caption-text">2017: Council member and British cosmologist Lord Martin Rees presents the Golden Plate Award to Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan at the Academy of Achievement’s 52nd annual International Achievement Summit in London.</figcaption></figure> <p>In 2009, Venki Ramakrishnan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, sharing the prize with Tom Steitz and Ada Yonath  “for mapping the ribosome — one of the cell’s most complex machineries — at the atomic level.” Ramakrishnan’s achievements were enthusiastically celebrated in his native India, as well as in his adopted home of Britain. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2012 for services to molecular biology, although he does not use the title “Sir.” In 2015, he was elected to a five-year term as President of the Royal Society, an honor previously held by Sir Isaac Newton, among others.</p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan and Vera Rosenberry live in the village of Grantchester, close enough to central Cambridge and LMB for him to commute by bicycle in good weather. While Venki Ramakrishnan was pursuing his career, Vera became a successful writer and illustrator of children’s books, with over 30 titles to her credit. Their daughter, Tanya, is a public health physician in Portland, Oregon. Their son, Raman, is the cellist of the Daedalus Quartet, based in New York City.</p> </body></html> <div class="clearfix"> </div> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane" id="profile" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <header class="editorial-article__header"> <figure class="text-xs-center"> <img class="inductee-badge" src="/web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/inducted-badge@2x.png" alt="Inducted Badge" width="120" height="120"/> <figcaption class="serif-3 text-brand-primary"> Inducted in 2017 </figcaption> </figure> </header> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <dl class="clearfix m-b-0"> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Career</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> <div><a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.scientist">Scientist</a></div> <div><a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.physicist">Physicist</a></div> <div><a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.biochemist">Biochemist</a></div> <div><a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.cell-biologist">Cell Biologist</a></div> </dd> </div> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> April 1, 1952 </dd> </div> </dl> </aside> <article class="col-md-8 editorial-article clearfix"> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan was born in India to a family of scientists. He had already earned a Ph.D. in physics when his attention turned to molecular biology. As a postdoctoral fellow at Yale, he began his research on the structure and function of the ribosome, a major structure in all cells that interprets genetic instructions to produce proteins.</p> <p>At first, few appreciated the value of his research. He applied to roughly 50 universities in the United States before he secured his first academic appointment. A move to Cambridge University in 1999 led to major breakthroughs in his research. By 2007, his laboratory had determined the atomic structure of the entire ribosome, discoveries that not only yield insight into protein synthesis but expand our understanding of the antibiotic function.</p> <p>His research, which has appeared in the journals <em>Nature</em>, <em>Science,</em> and <em>Cell</em>, brought him the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. A group leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, he is now serving as President of the Royal Society, the world’s oldest scientific association.</p> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane" id="interview" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <div class="col-md-12 interview-feature-video"> <figure> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/52mAptJu8AQ?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Ramakrishnan-Venki-2017-MasterEdit.00_20_37_10.Still008-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Ramakrishnan-Venki-2017-MasterEdit.00_20_37_10.Still008-760x428.jpg"></div> <div class="video-tag sans-4"> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> <div class="video-tag__text">Watch full interview</div> </div> </div> </figure> </div> <header class="col-md-12 text-xs-center m-b-2"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> </header> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <h2 class="serif-3 achiever--biography-subtitle">President of the Royal Society</h2> <div class="sans-2">London, England</div> <div class="sans-2">October 18, 2017</div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8">   <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>Today you’re a Nobel Prize winner and President of the Royal Society, but when you completed your postdoctoral fellowship at Yale, you applied to more than 50 academic institutions before you found a job in the United States. All of those institutions turned you down. What were they thinking?</strong></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/cuPvDMCtqPc?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Ramakrishnan-Venki-2017-MasterEdit.00_14_57_19.Still015-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Ramakrishnan-Venki-2017-MasterEdit.00_14_57_19.Still015-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: I had an undergraduate degree in physics from India. Then I went to Ohio University — which is a decent university, but it’s not like a top-ranked university — and did theoretical physics. Then I switched to biology at University of California, San Diego, but I didn’t go on to get a second degree. Then I used a weird technique, neutron scattering, to look at a biological problem. Then I’m applying to biology and biochemistry departments. These people look at — so there are two kinds of places — one is research universities, and they look at neutron scattering, and they think, “Does this guy want a nuclear reactor? We don’t have one on campus, and anyway, what’s this neutron scattering going to do for biology? And he’s been to all these sorts of — we don’t even know what to make of his CV, and he doesn’t have any papers in top fancy journals,” and so on. So they just put my application into pile B, and I probably have done the same thing. Then I also applied to four-year colleges. America has lots and lots of excellent four-year colleges — and some not so excellent ones, too. They probably saw, “Hey, wait a minute. Look at this guy’s long name. He’s from India. We don’t even know if he speaks English. How do we know he’s even going to be able to teach? And he has this slightly weird background.” So I went into pile B for them, too. So I was actually lucky, in the end, to get a job at a national lab.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p>The thing was, I didn’t drop out of science. And so the point I want to make is, despite all this, I tried to keep my options open. So I went to Oakridge National Lab, and that didn’t last very long because I went there under a misunderstanding, and it turned out I couldn’t do my own research. Then I got bailed out a second time when I went to Brookhaven National Lab. The point is, at each point, I was trying to keep my options open to be able to continue to do science rather than dropping out. I did have a plan B or C. I could have become a computer programmer because this was still in the early ‘80s, and Silicon Valley had not taken off yet. It was just about to take off. Or I could have become a high school science or math teacher. Those were my two options. I think certainly I would have been happy as a high school science and math teacher. I think that’s a very worthy profession.</p> </div>     <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>How did you become interested in ribosomes?</strong></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/swsdm83hAgw?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Ramakrishnan-Venki-2017-MasterEdit.01_16_36_26.Still003-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Ramakrishnan-Venki-2017-MasterEdit.01_16_36_26.Still003-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: I think I got into ribosomes somewhat by accident, as is often the case in science. I was a graduate student at UC San Diego. I’d switched from physics to biology, and I came across an interesting article by two people at Yale. I ended up writing to them, and they offered me a fellowship. That’s how I got into it, but the reason I was interested in it was because it lies right at the crossroads of biology. If you think of biology, biology is essentially a sort of self-perpetuating system that carries information. You have a cell. The cell has information not only to make it work but to produce more cells. That information resides in our genes. But most of the molecules that carry out many of the functions of the cell — how it moves or even how it divides — are carried out by proteins, the thousands of proteins. Each protein is made by information in a gene, and a gene is a stretch of information along DNA. The molecule that takes that genetic information and converts it to a protein is this enormous molecule called the ribosome. And I had a physics training. I was doing biology, and this seemed like a great problem to tackle because it was fundamentally important, but it was also enormous and challenging and required a lot of physical techniques.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>Did you realize this research would lead to such an important breakthrough?</strong></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/haNljx0LqN0?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Ramakrishnan-Venki-2017-MasterEdit.00_57_20_24.Still013-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Ramakrishnan-Venki-2017-MasterEdit.00_57_20_24.Still013-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/perseverance/">Perseverance</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: It’s right at the crossroads of biology. In fact, the ribosome is older than DNA or proteins. It’s the molecule that produces proteins, and it goes back to a world where probably there was no DNA, and RNA was the genetic material. It’s called the RNA World Hypothesis. We can talk about that in a second. But I knew it was important. I also felt that the technology had changed to make certain kinds of experiments possible with crystallography, which used synchrotrons, and the fact that you can choose the wavelength of x-rays very precisely to get a signal from certain special atoms that you’ve put into the structure. So I knew that there was a breakthrough possible. I wasn’t absolutely sure, and so I took a 40-percent pay cut to move from the U.S. to England because I didn’t know how long it would take. I didn’t know how long it would take to get crystals that were good enough or how long it would take to actually solve the structure. Because, as I said, a group had been working on a different crystal form of a different part of the ribosome for almost 15 years and there hadn’t been any real breakthroughs in terms of actual structures. So I thought, “Maybe there are some real problems that I may come across, and I don’t know how long it will take.”</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><figure id="attachment_44226" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-44226" style="width: 2575px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-44226 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-AP_091007019119.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-44226 lazyload" alt="" width="2575" height="1633" data-sizes="(max-width: 2575px) 100vw, 2575px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-AP_091007019119.jpg 2575w, /web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-AP_091007019119-380x241.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-AP_091007019119-760x482.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-AP_091007019119.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-44226" class="wp-caption-text">2009: Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan in his lab at Medical Research Council Lab in Cambridge. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)</figcaption></figure> </body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>Did your wife support this decision?</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: We had done a sabbatical in Cambridge about seven years earlier. She liked Cambridge, but we were very happy in Utah. I had great colleagues at the University of Utah. My wife and I like hiking and the outdoors and so on. So it was a sacrifice, and I think what my wife said was, “Look, I’ve moved around with you all my life, ever since we got married, and this is my last move. So if you want to do it, go ahead. I’ll be okay with it, but I’m not moving again.” And I have to say, I keep getting offers to go back to the U.S. and so on, and those offers never last more than 10 seconds because Vera will just say, “Forget it, I’m not moving.”</p> <p><strong>Let’s talk about 2007, when you determined the atomic structure of the ribosome.</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: I should say it happened in two stages. The ribosome has two halves. There’s a smaller half and a larger half. The smaller half reads the genetic code, and the larger half makes the protein chain. Now, these two halves were solved in 2000 — the atomic structures. In some sense that was the really big breakthrough because those two halves came out of nothing.</p> <p>So we did the small half, and Ada Yonath, who had started this work many years earlier, had her own version of the small half of the subunit. And the group at Yale — which included my old professor, Peter Moore, and was working with Tom Steitz, who was the crystallographer in the effort — solved the large half.</p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/orlQZarH6AI?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Ramakrishnan-Venki-2017-MasterEdit.00_17_49_15.Still005-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Ramakrishnan-Venki-2017-MasterEdit.00_17_49_15.Still005-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/perseverance/">Perseverance</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>So it was quite a tense, competitive race to try and get there with the first look at the ribosome in atomic terms. But then, if you want to understand how the ribosome works, you can’t just have these two halves separately. It would be like if you looked at what an engine looked like and what a crankshaft looked like but never knew how they were put together and how they worked. Right? So the focus then went on to solving the entire ribosome caught in the act of actually doing its job, and that took many more years. Our breakthrough there came in 2006, when we could get the structure of the whole thing, with the piece of the genetic information, and with the little adaptor molecules that bring the building blocks of proteins into the ribosome.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><p>If you want to understand how a machine works, you have to look at it at different stages, like when the spark plug is firing and the piston’s going down and when the wheel is turning and so on.  So we try to arrest the ribosome at different stages.  You have to think of it as a molecular machine that’s moving along, making protein according to instructions in our genes.</p> <p>I have a very nice movie of it online that people can look up.  If they just Google my name and “ribosome movie,” you can see it.  You can see this, but the way you do that is by trapping the ribosome at different points and then determining the crystal structure of those states.  And then you sort of interpolate like between frames of a movie.</p> <figure id="attachment_44233" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-44233" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-44233 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-ramakrishnan_venki-hr.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-44233 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="3047" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-ramakrishnan_venki-hr.jpg 2280w, /web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-ramakrishnan_venki-hr-284x380.jpg 284w, /web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-ramakrishnan_venki-hr-569x760.jpg 569w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-ramakrishnan_venki-hr.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-44233" class="wp-caption-text">2014: Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan in front of a high-resolution structure of 30S ribosomal subunit. (© Max Alexander)</figcaption></figure> <p><strong>We understand there was a </strong><strong>point when you realized what you’d found, and you told your fellow labmates, “We’re going to be famous.”</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan:   When you go to one of these big x‑ray beamlines — they come out of these huge accelerators, and that’s what shoots out these x‑rays — and you use the x-rays to hit your crystal and collect your data.  So you apply for beam time on one of these instruments.  You often get a day or two, but that means you have to work nonstop around the clock.  So we were given two days of beam time at a beamline outside of Chicago at Argonne National Lab.  It’s free if you’re academic.  If you’re commercial, like a drug company, then you have to pay probably thousands of dollars a day, but for academics it’s free.</p> </body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/8b0Y_AD9dK8?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Ramakrishnan-Venki-2017-MasterEdit.00_57_16_12.Still014-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Ramakrishnan-Venki-2017-MasterEdit.00_57_16_12.Still014-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/perseverance/">Perseverance</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>There were four of us, and we worked in 12-hour shifts so that there were always two people at any given time on the beamline. We staggered it so there’d always be one person who was tiring and one person who was fresh because we could not afford to make mistakes because we were in this tight competition. So at the end of it, we had to do a quick calculation to see if the experiment had worked. I remember one of us had made a slight mistake in the calculation and there’s no signal there at all. And I thought, “Oh my God, we’re just really out of it now!” But then I noticed that there was a slight mistake, and I redid the calculation and this huge signal — these peaks popped out. We were all exhausted. First of all, we had come from England to Chicago and then, working around the clock with no rest, and we were just exhausted. At the end of it, to know that it had worked, it was just all too much. I’m not such an exuberant guy, normally, but I couldn’t help it. I just got up and started dancing around the room, saying, “Guys, we’re going to be famous!” And actually, every one of them did very well. The graduate student who came with me from Utah, he’s now a professor at Caltech. All of them are doing very well.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>Were you aware of medical implications of your Nobel-winning research?</strong></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/BCY5islWbQQ?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Ramakrishnan-Venki-2017-MasterEdit.00_36_29_15.Still011-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Ramakrishnan-Venki-2017-MasterEdit.00_36_29_15.Still011-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/vision/">Vision</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: Everybody knew that the ribosome is a target for lots of antibiotics, and it’s because it’s such an ancient molecule that our ribosomes are somewhat different from the ribosomes of bacteria. So some compounds will bind better to the bacterial ribosome and stop them from working, and they won’t do much to our own ribosomes. That’s how these antibiotics work. There are many of them: tetracycline or erythromycin, azithromycin. All of us, at some point, need them. We all knew that, and we knew that once we solved the structure, we’d be able to figure out exactly how these antibiotics bound to the ribosome. If we knew that, we could design compounds that bound even better at these sites or even to new sites. So that was not unexpected. In fact, when we published the first structure of this — what I call the small subunit — there were two back‑to‑back papers that we published. One was just a structure. Another was a structure with three antibiotics bound to it, to show how they stop different aspects of ribosome function. Not surprisingly, pharmaceutical companies have taken this up.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><p>But there’s a bigger problem with antibiotics, which has nothing to do with science.  We have a huge problem now with emerging infectious disease and antibiotic drug-resistant disease, but there’s not a lot of money in it yet.  The reason is, if you have a patient who’s got an infection, you’re going to treat him with generic cheap antibiotics unless the patient has a drug‑resistant infection.  Only then will you give the sort of new super-antibiotic.  Right?  So that means the patient pool is very small.  So there’s not a lot of money to be made.</p> <p>The other thing is, it’s not like taking an anti-cholesterol drug or a blood pressure or a diabetes drug, that you have to pop a pill every day of your life. This is, you take a pill for a week, and then you’re cured if the antibiotic’s any good.  So there isn’t a huge profit.  It has to do with how we fund new medicines.  People don’t remember that penicillin was not funded by private pharmaceutical companies.  The British government launched a huge effort to develop penicillin because more soldiers were dying of infection in World War II than were actually being killed by bullets.  So there was a big push to develop penicillin.  There’s no reason why governments and world health organizations — the Gates Foundation, all these nonprofits — can’t get into the act to develop new antibiotics for infectious disease.</p> <figure id="attachment_40730" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-40730" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-40730 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-LondonSummit_0300.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-40730 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="2036" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-LondonSummit_0300.jpg 2280w, /web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-LondonSummit_0300-380x339.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-LondonSummit_0300-760x679.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-LondonSummit_0300.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-40730" class="wp-caption-text">2017: Academy of Achievement honoree Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan addresses Summit delegates in Mayfair, London.</figcaption></figure> <p><strong>Are we overusing antibiotics?</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: We are.  There are hundreds of thousands of prescriptions in the U.S. for the common cold or flu.  They give antibiotics.  It’s less true in Britain, where the NHS has very strict guidelines.  Another big problem is that people discovered completely by accident that if you give an antibiotic slurry into animal feed, the animals get fatter.  Probably what they’re doing is they’re changing the microbiome of the animal and they’re gaining weight.  So the agricultural industry uses antibiotics in cattle feed.  This is a terrible use of antibiotics because it’s a guarantee that you can get resistance and spread of resistance.</p> <p>I think that we need to be very strict about antibiotic use and have proper guidelines.  We could even consider rotating antibiotics so that you take some off the market for a while and so the resistance goes away.  There are lots of things to think about.</p> <p><strong>What qualities are necessary to be a scientist?</strong></p> </body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/n1K1CRPvLX0?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Ramakrishnan-Venki-2017-MasterEdit.00_36_31_12.Still012-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Ramakrishnan-Venki-2017-MasterEdit.00_36_31_12.Still012-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/vision/">Vision</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: I think the most essential quality is you have to be curious and interested. You have to want to know the answer, and you have to be interested in the problem. If you’re not interested in the question, you’re not going to spend all those long hours of drudgery trying to get at the answer. Even — whether you’re doing theory or whether you’re doing experiments — a lot of science is tedious. It involves just getting the job done, doing a lot of grunt work.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>Aren’t there failures, too, along the way?</strong></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235358if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/GB2CcX1qM-A?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Ramakrishnan-Venki-2017-MasterEdit.00_10_20_11.Still016-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Ramakrishnan-Venki-2017-MasterEdit.00_10_20_11.Still016-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: There’s lots of failure along the way. You try ideas, they don’t work, and you have to say, “Okay, that didn’t work; I’m going to try a different tack,” and so on. So it requires, first of all, a real curiosity and passion to know the answer. That’s a given. Then it requires patience. You have to be able to tolerate failure and so on. It requires a little bit of optimism, some mental strength. I joke that there are no pessimists in science. In my lab, there will always be what we call “Eeyores,” from <em>Winnie the Pooh</em>, people who are always complaining. But those people are not pessimists because if they were real pessimists — they’re just whiners — if they were real pessimists, they would have left the field. They would, because it takes a lot of optimism that, “Oh well, things will eventually work out. I don’t know how, but it’s going to work out.” So that’s the feeling that scientists need to have. I think collegiality and willingness to ask for help, I think it’s a very important aspect of science because you shouldn’t be embarrassed not to know something. Ignorance is not a sin. I would say my main strength is I’ve never been embarrassed to ask for help from colleagues or even my students and postdocs and so on. I think that allows you to overcome stumbling blocks. People will give you ideas or that sort of thing.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>What is it you find so rewarding about your research into the ribosome?</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: The ribosome, in a way, goes back to a world even before there was DNA or protein because it is the ribosome that evolved to make proteins. So it must have come from a world before there were any proteins. So in a way, it goes right back to the early beginnings of life, where information was probably carried by RNA, and a lot of the reactions were done by RNA, as well, or maybe with some random proteins that happened to be around. It’s called the RNA World Hypothesis. So in that sense, the ribosome goes right back to the earliest times of life. So it’s quite fundamental. And as I said, it’s the thing that is a bridge between genetic information and the workhorses that actually carry out the functions of life, which are the proteins. I was lucky to hit on a problem that had such a long lifetime and still is interesting. That doesn’t happen very often in science.</p> </div>    <aside class="collapse" id="full-interview">    <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>You grew up among scientists, not only your parents, but other scientists visiting your home. How did that influence you?</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: Well, I have to be honest. I was something of a rebel as a school kid. There were about three or four grades when I just refused to study, even for exams, and was in the bottom third of my class. And my parents were really worried because I had gone from being at the top of my class to the bottom third.</p> <p>I thought their life was sort of interesting because they would always travel to interesting places, and all these people from America and England and other parts of Europe would come and visit. So I thought, “This is sort of an interesting life,” but I didn’t think that I would actually be a scientist. To some extent, I thought if I went in that direction, I would rather be an engineer. I thought I’d want to be an electronic engineer or something like that.</p> <p>But that changed in the last couple of years of high school. Even then, I wanted to be an engineer, but then I didn’t get into the — there are these IITs — a lot of Silicon Valley companies are founded by graduates of the Indian Institutes of Technology. They’re these very elite schools, which take like .5 percent or .1 percent of the applicants. And I didn’t prepare for those exams. So I didn’t really do well and I didn’t make it. But then I got the Indian equivalent of what used to be the Westinghouse and what’s now — I think it’s called Intel — but now it’s something else. Anyway, it’s a national science talent scholarship. But if you took that scholarship, you could only do basic science. You couldn’t do engineering. So that’s when I decided, “Actually, I think I’ll be a scientist.“ To some extent, my mother was behind my taking that exam. She said, “You really should try and do this.”</p> <p><strong>So she saw some potential in you?</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: I think so. She wasn’t a very demonstrative person. So she would never have told me, “I think you’re going to do great,” or something. But you could tell that she had some confidence, that she expected me to make something of myself. I think that, in itself, is probably enough.</p> <p><strong>Your father allowed your mom to get a Ph.D. of her own, didn’t he?</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: Well, it wasn’t that he gave her permission. He’s the one who encouraged her. He said, “You really should go and get a Ph.D.” And then she went off to McGill, where she worked with a very famous group headed by Donald Hebb, who was a very famous psychologist. His theories are still the basis of a lot of modern psychology. Luckily for my dad, his sister came and helped out with taking care of me because he had to go to work and so on. So it worked out.</p> <p><strong>So she went to McGill University in Canada while you were still living in India?</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: Yes, with my dad and my aunt. My aunt came over to help my dad take care of me. I think I was about four years old.</p> <p><strong>You also were without parents at an even younger age.</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: Oh, yeah. I was in South India in a town called Chidambaram. My dad was in Madison, Wisconsin. I still joke that if he had — he was very worried about money, and he thought, “Oh, I can’t afford to take my wife with me,” and so on, “and especially if she’s pregnant and we have a kid. Who’s going to pay for it all?” et cetera. He was very worried about money, so he left my mom with her family in South India and went off to do a postdoc. I felt that if he had taken my mom with him, then I’d have been born in Wisconsin, and I could have become president, but there we are.</p> <p><strong>You did okay. What were their fields?</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: My dad was a biochemist, and my mom, as you know, went to McGill to get a Ph.D. in psychology, but when she came back, there wasn’t really an opportunity for her. So they decided to team up, and they started looking at the effect of malnutrition on mental retardation and the relationship between malnutrition and mental retardation. So she could use her psychology background to analyze the mental retardation part. And they could also analyze in animal models what was happening in the brain when you starved animals and so on. So it kind of worked out for them, I think.</p> <p><strong>So they worked as a team?</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: They did work as a team. They published a lot of papers together. I wouldn’t recommend it, actually. I think it can work, but I’m not so sure about it as a model. I think spouses should probably work in different labs. But it’s happened so often. Pierre and Marie Curie, there’s a classic example of a husband and wife team. Even their daughter Irène Joliot‑Curie worked with her husband, and they won the Nobel Prize as well. So it does work in many cases, but I don’t know. I like the idea that my wife is an artist and a children’s book writer, and I come home and I don’t have to talk science all the time.</p> <p><strong>And you can hear about her work.</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: Yes, I can hear about her work, and we have lots of other interests — music and hiking and movies and things like that. So it gives a certain balance to my life, I think.</p> <p><strong>You did make a rather dramatic shift from physics to biology. I gather that you felt physics was a bit slow.</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: I thought physics was — I felt I didn’t have the aptitude. Part of it was — this goes back to my telling you about how you have to care about the problem. Part of it is, my thesis problem was something I was not that interested in. I felt like maybe I didn’t have an aptitude. I couldn’t figure out where it was going. So I also feel physics is a very mature field. And it’s really hard to make big breakthroughs in physics — I mean <em>fundamental</em> breakthroughs — whereas, in biology, we’re still making breakthroughs — very, very fundamental questions.</p> <p><strong>So that attracted you?</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: It did attract me. The other thing was, I knew lots of physicists — Francis Crick or Max Delbrück — had gone into biology from physics and done very well. So I knew it was possible, and that’s why I did it. But the important thing to remember is there are a lot of physicists who go into biology and they never stop being physicists. Everything looks like a physics problem to them, and they end up not doing very interesting work.</p> <p>They just talk to each other, and they don’t influence the larger biological community. I think what you should do if you make the transition is to take that critical, analytical, quantitative way of thinking that you get as a physicist, but then become a biologist, learn what it is to be a biologist and what the questions are. Then your physics background might help you in some indirect way, but you can’t just dabble in biology. I think that just doesn’t work.</p> <p><strong>Does physics teach you to be patient?</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: I think biology does, too. If you have to do a biological experiment, that’s long hours and lots of things. I think all science requires patience.</p> <p><strong>There are two scientists who have been very close to our organization named Watson and Crick. Can you explain the impact of what they did?</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: I know Jim Watson personally. I met him many times, and we’ve chatted, because both of them did their big breakthrough in my institute, the Medical Research Council Lab. It was actually the ancestor of my institute. I never knew Crick personally, but I saw him at the next table in a faculty club when I was having lunch in UCSD. I had done work that directly related to his ideas about the genetic code and how the ribosome helps to read the genetic code, but I was too shy to go and introduce myself to him. I sort of regret it, but on the other hand, I felt you don’t want to be a pest. These people have — are constantly having people come and interrupt them, and in some ways, I’m glad I didn’t.</p> <p>I think their work was hugely important because when they began their work, people had just figured out that DNA somehow carries genetic information. Nobody knew how a molecule could have genetic information. What the double helix structure of DNA — and of course, its discovery is very controversial because of data they used from Rosalind Franklin and so on, but despite that, they were brilliant in putting together lots of information.</p> <p>Part of it came from Rosalind Franklin, part of it came from knowing what the right chemistry was of these bases and then figuring out that these bases can only interact in certain ways, that an A interacts only with T, a C interacts only with G. The point of that was that when they got their structure, they could see in principle how each strand of DNA had the information to make the other strand. That means if you separated the two strands, then each one would make the other one, and then you’d have two copies. And that was the big mystery. How could you get two cells from one cell? Everything had to divide, right? And the information had to divide. And so it was a huge moment.</p> <p>It was like centuries —since we were humans, we’ve been wondering how is it that we divide. How is it we give birth to offspring? Why do chickens only give rise to chickens and how does a single cell like an egg grow into a whole organism? These are centuries-old mysteries. Suddenly we started to understand in molecular terms how this all would work. So I would say it was one of the great discoveries. I mean if, at 500 years, most of — sorry to say, but most of the people in this Academy will probably be sort of forgotten — okay, hopefully not, because, with digital media and so on — but something like the discovery of the structure of DNA, that’s one of those things like Darwin’s evolutionary theory, or Mendel’s discovering that there are genes, or the earlier idea that all life is organized as cells coming together. These are very, very fundamental cornerstones that will just be there forever.</p> <p><strong>Tell us about your initial research in the structure of the ribosome.</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: When I started, I knew that the ribosome was this very large molecule, and it actually consisted itself of 50 proteins and three long pieces of RNA. No one knew anything about what it looked like, and no one knew anything about even where the proteins were. What were these 50 proteins, and where were they even located?</p> <p>So we were using an initial technique called neutron scattering in Peter Moore’s lab. It was a collaboration with Don Engelman at Yale. The idea was to try and find out where these proteins were on the ribosome by trying to measure distances between pairs of proteins, much like a surveyor does in a triangulation that figures out a topological map by measuring lots of distances.</p> <p>This was a similar sort of idea. Now, in the end, that didn’t give you the kind of information you needed. What happened, also — since the time I joined the ribosome team, soon afterward, people very quickly realized that the real action in ribosomes was in the RNA part, not so much in the protein part. The proteins were doing something to help the RNA fold and work, et cetera.</p> <p>The key functions were done by the RNA. That seemed a much harder problem to tackle. So, many years later, I decided — almost 25 years later — I decided to join a sort of effort about — there was initially only one group working on it, out of Ada Yonath, in Germany and Israel. But then the project was sort of stalled for a while, and I felt that I had a different angle to how to get this structure of the whole molecule, using a technique called x-ray crystallography, where you have to crystallize ribosomes.</p> <p>That is, you have to coax all these enormous ribosome molecules to come together into a very regular three-dimensional array, which is what a crystal is.</p> <p>It’s essentially a three-dimensional array of molecules. If you’re growing a salt crystal, everybody — every kid — can do it. It’s an elementary school project — or a sugar crystal. But if you’re trying to slice something very large, it’s quite complicated and uncertain. Then, when you have the crystal, to use that crystal to get information about how to get a structure, an atomic structure, of the ribosome. It was non-trivial at the time.</p> <p><strong>Is there a more favorable environment for this kind of research at Cambridge?</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: There is. It has to do with the way science is funded at universities — and that’s true whether it’s England or the U.S. Professors are funded on research grants, and the grants last typically three to five years. So if, at the end of — let’s say, even if you have a five-year grant — more typically you get a four-year grant — but if you have a four- or five-year grant, that means by year three you have to have results because you have to write your renewal applications so the grant continues.<strong> </strong>If you don’t have results by three years, then you’re in a very precarious position because your grant won’t be renewed, and you’ll run out of money. Your university might tide you over for just a short bit, but then they want you to do something else and so on.</p> <p>The lab I went to, which is the same lab where I had done a sabbatical much earlier, is the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, and it’s very famous. It won its 16th Nobel Prize just a week ago. The reason it’s so successful is because it specializes in supporting long-term, challenging problems. So you’re never allowed to build a big empire there. They say, “We want you to focus on what’s really important, and for that, you don’t need 30 people. You need to figure out, ‘This is what I want to do,’ and work with a small team and do it.”</p> <p>So you don’t get a lot of money. Of course, as I told you, salary compared to the U.S. is not great, but you do have a lot of freedom and a lot of stability. And in my case, I had an additional advantage: it’s the birthplace of crystallography. There were people there who are real experts in crystallography, and this is a bit like — if you’ve ever been on a long expedition in a vehicle — you’d want to take along people who really know about auto mechanics, in case your car breaks down in the middle of the Sahara Desert or something like that, right? So if we’re pushing the limits of what crystallography could do, you want people around who really understand the technique and can help you if there are technical problems. As it turned out, I didn’t really end up needing them, but it’s nice to know they were there if I did need them.</p> <p><strong>How did you learn you had won the Nobel Prize?</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: Well that was interesting. The Nobel Committee will often have meetings where they invite people that they want to take a look at, but they sprinkle them among what I call a lot of decoys. So they’ll have a sort of conference on a general theme, and they’re probably considering three or four people — a few people in that field — but they invite a lot of people in that field. So it becomes a kind of an audition. Between 2000 and 2004, I think I went to Sweden almost every year I was invited. In 2004, there was this big “dog and pony show,” I call it, with all these famous scientists and all kinds of auditioning. And at the banquet at that meeting, this well-known ribosome biochemist from Sweden came and started arguing with me.</p> <p>He felt that I hadn’t given him enough credit for work he had done in the ‘70s and ‘80s — late ‘70s and early ‘80s. The reality was we didn’t quite agree with the sort of ideas that they had in the ‘80s. They were good ideas, and some parts were right, but the field, I think, had moved on. Of course, he still doesn’t agree. So we got into this big argument.</p> <p>Then I found out, a few months later, that he was appointed to the Nobel Committee for Chemistry. So I figured, there’s no way I’m going to get the Nobel Prize. I mean this guy doesn’t agree with me at all about a really important aspect of what we had done, which is why the code is read so accurately by the ribosome. It’s a detail — a real technical detail — but it’s an important detail. So then I just didn’t go to Sweden. I was invited to several meetings, and I think I only went to one, just a small thing where a friend had invited me to give a talk at his institution. But I didn’t go to any conferences in Sweden. I figured, why should I bother?</p> <p>And then, in 2009, when this phone call came along, I was already in a bad mood because on my way to work I had a flat tire, and I had to walk the rest of the way to work, and I was late. So this phone rings and this woman says, “I’m calling from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and it’s a very important call. Could you please hold the line?” And I thought, “Oh, this is just some prank,” because I have a couple of friends who love to play pranks. We often used to joke, “Wouldn’t it be great to have some Swedish person — a postdoc — call some famous scientist and say, ‘Hey, you’ve won the Nobel Prize,’ just as a joke —because it would be kind of a cruel joke, just something you fantasize about.</p> <p>Anyway, so I thought it was absolutely sure because I was so sure that I would be cut out of it. But what it shows is, this guy had real integrity, that he had his differences about one area, and in a committee, he doesn’t even have to say I’m bad. He could just say, “Oh well, I think Venki’s okay, but I’m not sure,” and that would be enough to sink my chances because at that level unless everybody feels you’re absolutely first‑rate, you don’t get past the filter. So I think it shows real integrity on his part.</p> <p>There are a lot of things to complain about with prizes, in general. I’m not a fan of prizes because science is not a sporting competition where you can measure who came first, second, and third. It’s a multidimensional thing. Different people contribute different things. And also, even those who make the breakthroughs depend on lots and lots of other things to make their breakthroughs. It’s an entire community that creates the breakthrough.</p> <p>So it’s very much like a team sport. If you have to use a sports analogy, it’s much more like soccer or football than it is like a track — where a team carries a ball and then the final person scores the goal. But who brought the ball all over the field to get it to that point? So I think it’s a bit like that. So I wasn’t a huge fan, but maybe because they have integrity, the Nobel is respected.</p> <p><strong>So you’re saying the honor goes to just a small handful of scientists when there are many, many scientists in back of that discovery.</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: Oh, many. Take me, for example. I could never have done this work myself. Even some of the ideas — because when you’re doing a big project, people say, “Why don’t we try this? Why don’t we try —” you know. Those ideas come from my students and postdocs and so on. Of course, they wouldn’t have done it without my saying, “This is a project. We’ve got to do this; we’ve got to do this,” and saying, “Yes, that’s a good idea; let’s go there.” So I am exercising leadership, but it would never happen by myself.</p> <p>So that’s one aspect, but then there are lots and lots of scientists who’ve made important contributions, like the person who figured out — or the two people who figured out — that you should use this compound to get a great signal. They tried it on a different system. And they were Jamie Cate and Jennifer Doudna, and Jennifer Doudna is here today being honored, and she went on to be one of the discoverers of CRISPR-Cas, which is for genome editing. Anyway, they came up with this compound that all of us used. So there’s an example. And Jamie Cate, he’s a brilliant guy, but he didn’t get as much recognition as he might have.</p> <p>So I think this is the kind of thing that prizes, in some way, misrepresent science. I would say, what we have to do is think of ourselves as kind of token representatives of science. We’re the lucky ones who got recognized for a large body of knowledge. We are lucky to happen to have made the breakthrough. I also don’t think that it’s very rare that if — so, for example, if I hadn’t made the breakthrough, it would have happened anyway, not even that much later. And I think that’s true of almost every aspect of science.</p> <p>Think about calculus. For hundreds of years, nobody had calculus. Suddenly, in the same lifetime, Newton and Leibniz discovered calculus. Why do you think that is? I think it’s because the state of knowledge had reached the stage where the next step was calculus, so two people discovered it simultaneously. I think that’s what happens. You get to a point where the next step becomes obvious to a few people, but if those people hadn’t existed, it might have happened a little later and somebody else would have realized it.</p> <p><strong>But winning the Nobel Prize must feel pretty good.</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: Oh, it’s always great to be recognized. And I don’t want to be crass about it, but if you’re an academic in Britain, it’s nice to have a big cash award. I was able to pay off my mortgage. I was able to help my son with his. He’s a cellist, and I bought him a nice cello. So I put the money to good use. The fact that it gives you a kind of credibility, and it shows that your peers thought you’re really a good scientist. I think that all feels good.</p> <p><strong>We’ve interviewed a number of Nobel Prize winners for this project. They’re mostly older than you, and their prizes came long after their discovery. You received the Nobel Prize very soon after the discovery, didn’t you?</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: I think there are two kinds of prizes in the Nobel. In the first case, if you start a new field, it takes a very long time for people to figure out that, actually, this field is really important. It has its early beginnings. People don’t realize. They think, “Oh, that’s sort of interesting,” but they don’t really realize how important it is, and that might take a very long time. And then you get it 20, 30 years later. The most extreme is Peyton Rous, who showed that viruses can cause cancer. He had to wait, I think, 56 years for his Nobel Prize.</p> <p>Or the guy who discovered the electron microscope, Ernst Ruska — he invented it just before World War II. I think, after the war, people simply forgot about him and kept on using electron microscopes and forgot that this guy had actually invented it, and he was in his 80s. Fifty-three years later he got the Nobel Prize. So that’s one kind of prize. The other kind is where people know that the goal is very important and it’s a question of having done it, and that’s the case, say, with the structure of DNA or the structure of the ribosome.</p> <p>So many of these structural prizes only wait a few years before the Nobel is awarded. In physics, often it will go very quickly — for example, the gravity waves. Of course, it was predicted by Einstein a long time ago, in 1918 or something — 1915. But the fact is that it was only discovered a couple of years ago. But because it was such a fundamental discovery, there was no real doubt about it being prize-worthy.</p> <p><strong>You mentioned that this isn’t a sporting competition, but it seems like there was kind of a race, and it does seem to be one motivation in science, to beat the other team.</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: Oh, there is no question. Humans are a mixture of being competitive and cooperative. We will cooperate in some circumstances and compete in others. If we don’t recognize that, we’re not acknowledging what it means to be human. So science is the same way. Scientists will collaborate — like the gravity wave thing was a huge large-scale collaboration. Everybody — or the Higgs boson — thousands of scientists each had to do their little part to make the whole thing happen. So that’s a great example of cooperation.</p> <p>But often, what will happen is, there’s a goal, and people know that if you get there first, you will get the lion’s share of the recognition, and that is a big driving force because of the desire to be recognized and the desire to be acknowledged as first-rate, and so on. It’s human nature. It does lead to kind of strange behavior, too. People in competition will elbow each other metaphorically and try to spin it so that they’ve done the best or the most important part and so on. So it brings out what I think of as a somewhat dark side of human nature as well.</p> <p><strong>Is there any sense of subterfuge, of trying to hide how close one is?</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: Oh, definitely. When you’re in a race, you try not to divulge where you are because you don’t want other groups to speed up, and that is part of the unfortunate thing. What I say is, competition is great for science because it makes everybody really work hard and work smart because they have to think hard about what they’re doing because they can’t afford to waste time on bad experiments. So they’re really focused, working around the clock very intelligently. So it’s great for science because it makes science go forward very quickly. But it’s not great for the <em>scientist</em> because it’s so stressful, and it’s stressful for the young people in the lab because they’re worried. If they’re scooped, what happens? And so on. But often, a lot of science is like that, and a lot of science isn’t. Some science, you’re doing something that’s so far out that no one else cares, but you are interested in it. I think that’s the best kind of science to do, where you’re doing something no one else cares about but you really feel is interesting.</p> <p><strong>Can you talk about the role of creativity in scientific research?</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: I think it was Thomas Edison who said, “Science is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.” That’s probably true, but you couldn’t make the breakthrough without that one percent. I think creativity — I see it as simply keeping an open mind and not closing yourself off to ideas and possibilities. If you see a weird result, just think about it. Don’t just sort of dismiss it as, “Oh, that’s a mistake,” because it actually might be telling you something interesting. Or if somebody is working on some other problem or some unrelated thing, take an interest. Because sometimes what he or she is doing might actually be something that might give you that little magic bullet that you were looking for. So I think creativity simply means being really open to new ideas and new possibilities, and then somehow your brain puts it together. And it doesn’t do it necessarily in a conscious way.</p> <p>I also think it’s very important for people not to be complete workaholics. I think that can kill creativity, and I think in America people work far too hard, especially if they work for the private sector. They’re under the gun all the time, and they’re expected to be on — with these smartphones, you’re on call 24 hours a day, and if you don’t answer your email in five minutes, people think something’s wrong with you. I think that can kill creativity.</p> <p>You need long periods of time when you’re doing nothing, just going for a walk or a hike or a bike ride, or going to a concert. I think those are things that we need to have in our lives to foster creativity. I think that’s true for school kids. We shouldn’t be just dumping all this busy work on them so they don’t have time to just play. Play is creativity. That’s where you learn to be creative, in play.</p> <p><strong>Sometimes those discoveries come in surprising ways. The great mathematician Poincaré had a breakthrough from a dream.</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: Oh, it happens a lot. There was a famous Indian mathematician named Ramanujan about whom they made a movie with Jeremy Irons called <em>The Man Who Knew Infinity</em>. He used to dream up equations. He used to think of all these equations in his dreams, and he’d wake up and write them down. So I think creativity is a very funny business — imagination.</p> <p><strong>You’ve spoken out about the need for India to bolster its science education to become competitive again, and about the need to avoid disputes over religion. Could you tell us about that?</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: India is going through a critical period. After independence, there was a lot of optimism in India. But then things sort of slowed down, and then the economy was opened up, and it started booming economically, but it also created great inequalities, as often happens when you have free market economies booming. You also generate huge inequalities. India is at a stage now where it isn’t doing as well. It’s not as far along as China in terms of technology, industrialization, manufacturing, science — basic science — whereas 50 years ago, I would say Indian science and India, in general, was better off than China.</p> <p>In the meantime, what has also happened is that religious fundamentalist groups have gained much more of a voice and much more power in India. I’m not against people being pious and religious. I have nothing against people of whatever religion they have. But if you have a country like India, which is very heterogeneous — it’s got lots of different religions. There are more Muslims in India than any other country except Pakistan and Indonesia — over 100 million Muslims. So you cannot alienate huge sections of your population. You have to somehow all get along. And if you’re a minority, you also have to make accommodations to living in the broader culture. You also can’t segregate yourself and say, “We’re not going to deal with everybody.”</p> <p>I think what India needs is for all these groups to say, “Look, you’re you, I’m me. That’s fine, we’ll get along, and let’s go and do what needs to be done.” And what needs to be done is, first of all, you need education. Education is very patchy in India. If you’re poor, your chances of getting educated are really bad. And if you’re well off, you can go to a private school and get educated. And then you need more universities, you need dedicated teachers, you need the kind of education that will prepare them for the manufacturing of tomorrow. So there are lots and lots of things to be done. I think that’s what India needs to focus on and not worry about what I call unproductive squabbles.</p> <p><strong>The poor do not get all the educational benefits that the wealthy do in the United States, either. You spent a lot of time in the U.S. Did you see that?</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: Yes. As you know, I’m an American citizen. I’ve spent more of my life in the U.S. than any other country, and I went there fairly young. So I do regard the U.S. as one of my countries. I would say, when I went to the U.S., what struck me — this was in 1971 — what struck me was what a well‑integrated homogenous country it was. There was a strong middle class. Rich and poor kids would go to the same local school, things like that. I felt that’s what made America great, that you might live in a smaller house in a slightly poorer part of town, but you’d still go to the same high school and you’d have the same teachers. You’d hang out with everybody, you’d do okay, and then, if you were smart, you would rise up.</p> <p>That kind of social mobility and social mixing is happening less in America now. People are segregating themselves into rich and poor neighborhoods, different schools, different life experiences. And it’s going to get worse because people like Trump think it’s because of trade, but trade is only a part of it. A lot of it is because manufacturing and the economy are changing. Manufacturing no longer will employ those kinds of numbers of people that it did in the ‘20s and ‘30s and so on, or in the 19th century. And it’s going to be highly automated. Machines are going to do more and more of what humans have been doing. Machines are now doing — they can read radiographs. If you have an x‑ray, they can read your x-ray as well as many radiologists and better than most radiologists.</p> <p>So we have a situation where machines are going to do more and more of what humans traditionally have been doing. And this is leading to a hollowing out of the middle class. And so you have the one percent on one side who are benefitting from all this because it’s making everything cheaper for them. And since they’re very innovative and highly skilled, they’re okay. And then you have the middle class. There are no middle-class jobs. They’re disappearing, so they’re going to do the low-end jobs. And this is not a good recipe for society. And we have the same problem in Britain.</p> <p>We need to think about, how do we educate our population to prepare them for this new kind of world where they can still be productive? It’s not an easy problem. It’s an unsolved problem. But if we don’t start thinking now, we could have a big social revolution on our hands. I think the recent elections — the election in the U.S. and even the Brexit referendum here — are symptomatic of a much deeper problem.</p> <p><strong>What is your next objective in science?</strong></p> <p>Venki Ramakrishnan: Well, I’m sort of lucky in that the ribosome is so complex. For example, human ribosomes are far more complex than bacterial ribosomes. We also have mitochondria, which have their own kind of ribosome, which are totally different from bacteria or humans. And human ribosomes are also highly regulated. So, for example, what turns them on and off is very different than in bacteria.</p> <p>There’s lots of things, like quality control and turning on ribosomes just when you need them, like in nerve cells and so on. So there’s lots and lots of work to do. And how viruses hijack ribosomes so that the ribosomes only translate viral genes to make viral proteins and shut down, in the host, our own translation.</p> <p>So these are all interesting questions. Often, what happens in science is you got a problem and you solve it, and then there’s not much else to do and you have to move on. But the ribosome turned out to be a rather rich gold mine. Perhaps I’m a little intellectually lazy and feel like, “Why should I bother thinking about something else?”</p> <p>Maybe at some point, I should have thought, “I should do something different.” But now, I’m in my 60s, and I think it takes five years to learn a new field and another five years to be really good at it. I sense that, if I have ten years, I could spend ten years doing some interesting work on the ribosome where my lab is very well set up to do it, or I could go off and maybe just start doing things, and then I’d have to quit!</p> <p><strong>Well, it’s been great talking to you. And we hope you’ll keep working for many more years.</strong></p> </div>  </aside>  <div class="read-more__toggle collapsed" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#full-interview"><a href="#" class="sans-4 btn">Read full interview</a></div> </article> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane" id="gallery" role="tabpanel"> <section class="isotope-wrapper">  <header class="toolbar toolbar--gallery bg-white clearfix"> <div class="col-md-6"> <div class="serif-4">Venki Ramakrishnan, Ph.D. Gallery</div> </div> <div class="col-md-6 text-md-right isotope-toolbar"> <ul class="list-unstyled list-inline m-b-0 text-brand-primary sans-4"> <li class="list-inline-item" data-filter=".photo"><i class="icon-icon_camera"></i>13 photos</li> </ul> </div> </header> <div class="isotope-gallery isotope-box single-achiever__gallery clearfix"> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.72105263157895" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/venki-Golden-Plate-Awards-Council-TEMPLATE.jpg" data-image-caption="2017: Council member and British cosmologist Lord Martin Rees presents the Golden Plate Award to Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan at the Academy of Achievement’s 52nd annual International Achievement Summit in London. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="venki-Golden-Plate-Awards-Council-TEMPLATE" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/venki-Golden-Plate-Awards-Council-TEMPLATE-380x274.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2015/12/venki-Golden-Plate-Awards-Council-TEMPLATE-760x548.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.1081081081081" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/COLLEGE.jpg" data-image-caption="1975: Twenty-three-year-old Venki Ramakrishnan, a graduate student at Ohio University’s physics department, the same year he married fine arts student Vera Rosenberry." data-image-copyright="COLLEGE" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/COLLEGE-343x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/04/COLLEGE.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.3309982486865" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/nature-cover-300.jpg" data-image-caption="2000: Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan’s high-resolution structure of 30S ribosomal subunit, published by <i>Nature</i>, based on data collected at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS), the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory, and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF)." data-image-copyright="nature-cover-300" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/nature-cover-300-286x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/04/nature-cover-300-571x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4100185528757" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-AP_091007014391.jpg" data-image-caption="2009: Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan, Senior Scientist and Group Leader at Structural Studies Division, sits in his lab at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, England. (© AP Photo/Alastair Grant)" data-image-copyright="Venkatraman Ramakrishnan" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-AP_091007014391-269x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-AP_091007014391-539x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.89342105263158" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-LondonSummit_0300.jpg" data-image-caption="2017: Academy of Achievement honoree Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan addresses Summit delegates in Mayfair, London. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="wp--LondonSummit_0300" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-LondonSummit_0300-380x339.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-LondonSummit_0300-760x679.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66578947368421" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-GettyImages-94099359.jpg" data-image-caption="December 7, 2009: Nobel laureates American Thomas Steitz (L), Israeli Ada Yonath (C) and British-American Venki Ramakrishnan give a press conference at the Royal Swedish Academy in Stockholm. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded jointly “for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome.” (Olivier Morin/AFP/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="2009 Nobel laureates for chemistry, Amer" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-GettyImages-94099359-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-GettyImages-94099359-760x506.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.5353535353535" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-GettyImages-95060056-1.jpg" data-image-caption="December 10, 2009: Dr. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan receives the Nobel Prize in Chemistry from King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden during the Nobel Prize award ceremony at Stockholm Concert Hall. (Jonas Ekstromer/Getty)" data-image-copyright="British Venkatraman Ramakrishnan of Camb" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-GettyImages-95060056-1-248x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-GettyImages-95060056-1-495x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.1515151515152" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/GettyImages-98163786.jpg" data-image-caption="2010: Indian President Pratibha Devisingh Patil presents the Padma Vibhushan Award to Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan for his contribution to the nation, during the Padma Awards at the Presidential House in New Delhi. (© Raveendran)" data-image-copyright="Indian President Prathiba Singh Patil (L" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/GettyImages-98163786-330x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/04/GettyImages-98163786-660x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.63421052631579" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-AP_091007019119.jpg" data-image-caption="2009: Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan in his lab at Medical Research Council Lab in Cambridge. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)" data-image-copyright="Venkatraman Ramakrishnan" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-AP_091007019119-380x241.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-AP_091007019119-760x482.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.3356766256591" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-ramakrishnan_venki-hr.jpg" data-image-caption="2014: Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan in front of a high-resolution structure of 30S ribosomal subunit. (© Max Alexander)" data-image-copyright="Venki Ramakrishnan" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-ramakrishnan_venki-hr-284x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wp-ramakrishnan_venki-hr-569x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-LondonSummit_0304.jpg" data-image-caption="2017: Academy of Achievement honoree Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan addresses Summit delegates in Mayfair, London. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="wp-LondonSummit_0304" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-LondonSummit_0304-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-LondonSummit_0304-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-LondonSummit_0299.jpg" data-image-caption="2017: Academy of Achievement honoree Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan addresses Summit delegates in Mayfair, London. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="wp--LondonSummit_0299" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-LondonSummit_0299-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-LondonSummit_0299-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/ramakrishnan_760_ac.jpg" data-image-caption="Sir Venki Ramakrishnan President, the Royal Society; Group Leader, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology" data-image-copyright="ramakrishnan_760_ac" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/ramakrishnan_760_ac-380x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/ramakrishnan_760_ac.jpg"></div>  </figure>    </div> </section> </div> </div> <div class="container"> <footer class="editorial-article__footer col-md-8 col-md-offset-4"> <div class="editorial-article__next-link sans-3"> <a href="#"><strong>What's next:</strong> <span class="editorial-article__next-link-title">profile</span></a> </div> <ul class="social list-unstyled list-inline ssk-group m-b-0"> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-facebook" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever on Facebook"><i class="icon-icon_facebook-circle"></i></a></li> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-twitter" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever on Twitter"><i class="icon-icon_twitter-circle"></i></a></li>  <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-email" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever via Email"><i class="icon-icon_email-circle"></i></a></li> </ul> <time class="editorial-article__last-updated sans-6">This page last revised on November 14, 2018</time> <div class="sans-4"><a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/how-to-cite" target="_blank">How to cite this page</a></div> </footer> </div> <div class="container interview-related-achievers"> <hr class="m-t-3 m-b-3"/> <footer class="clearfix small-blocks text-xs-center"> <h3 class="m-b-3 serif-3">If you are inspired by this achiever’s story, you might also enjoy:</h3> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever science-exploration ambitious curious " data-year-inducted="2000" data-achiever-name="Blackburn"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/elizabeth-blackburn/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/blackburn-760_ac-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/blackburn-760_ac-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">Elizabeth Blackburn, Ph.D.</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Nobel Prize in Medicine</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">2000</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever science-exploration analytical curious help-mankind racism-discrimination " data-year-inducted="1989" data-achiever-name="Elion"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/gertrude-elion/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/elion_760_ac-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/elion_760_ac-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">Gertrude B. Elion, M.Sc.</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Nobel Prize in Medicine</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">1989</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever science-exploration analytical curious extroverted work-in-medicine help-mankind " data-year-inducted="2014" data-achiever-name="Lefkowitz"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/robert-lefkowitz-m-d/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/lefkowitz3-001a-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/lefkowitz3-001a-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">Robert J. Lefkowitz, M.D.</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Nobel Prize in Chemistry</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">2014</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever science-exploration analytical curious teach-others help-mankind " data-year-inducted="2000" data-achiever-name="Sanger"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/frederick-sanger-ph-d/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/sanger-001a-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/sanger-001a-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">Frederick Sanger, Ph.D.</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Two Nobel Prizes in Chemistry</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">2000</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever science-exploration ambitious analytical curious write explore-nature help-mankind " data-year-inducted="1986" data-achiever-name="Watson"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-d-watson/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/watson_760_ac-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/watson_760_ac-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">James D. Watson, Ph.D.</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Discoverer of the DNA Molecule</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">1986</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever science-exploration science-exploration science-exploration analytical athletic curious resourceful help-mankind work-in-medicine " data-year-inducted="2008" data-achiever-name="Yamanaka"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/shinya-yamanaka-m-d-ph-d/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Achiever-Profile-Square-760-yamanaka-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Achiever-Profile-Square-760-yamanaka-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">Shinya Yamanaka, M.D., Ph.D.</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Nobel Prize in Medicine</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">2008</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> </footer> </div> </div> </article> <div class="modal image-modal" id="imageModal" tabindex="-1" role="dialog" aria-labelledby="imageModal" aria-hidden="true"> <div class="close-container"> <div class="close icon-icon_x" data-dismiss="modal" aria-label="Close"></div> </div> <div class="modal-dialog" role="document"> <div class="modal-content"> <div class="modal-body"> <figure class="image-modal__container"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <img class="image-modal__image" src="/web/20200917235358im_/https://achievement.org/achiever/venki-ramakrishnan-ph-d/" alt=""/>  <figcaption class="p-t-2 container"> <div class="image-modal__caption sans-2 text-white"></div>  </figcaption> </div> </div> </figure> </div> </div> </div> </div> </main> </div> </div> <footer class="content-info main-footer bg-black"> <div class="container"> <div class="find-achiever" id="find-achiever-list"> <div class="form-group"> <input id="find-achiever-input" class="search js-focus" placeholder="Search for an achiever"/> <i class="icon-icon_chevron-down"></i> </div> <ul class="find-achiever-list list m-b-0 list-unstyled"> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/hank-aaron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Hank Aaron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/kareem-abdul-jabbar/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Kareem Abdul-Jabbar</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/lynsey-addario/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lynsey Addario</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/edward-albee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Edward Albee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/tenley-albright-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tenley Albright, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/svetlana-alexievich/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Svetlana Alexievich</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/julie-andrews/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Julie Andrews</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/maya-angelou/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Maya Angelou</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/frances-h-arnold-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frances H. 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Dell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/ron-dennis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Dennis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/joan-didion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joan Didion</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/david-herbert-donald-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Herbert Donald, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/david-doubilet/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Doubilet</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/jennifer-a-doudna-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jennifer A. Doudna, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/rita-dove/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rita Dove</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/sylvia-earle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sylvia Earle, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/elbaradei/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mohamed ElBaradei</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/gertrude-elion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Gertrude B. Elion, M.Sc.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/larry-j-ellison/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry J. Ellison</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/nora-ephron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nora Ephron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/julius-erving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Julius Erving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/tony-fadell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tony Fadell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/paul-farmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Farmer, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/suzanne-farrell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzanne Farrell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/anthony-s-fauci-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony S. Fauci, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/sally-field/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally Field</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/lord-norman-foster/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Norman Foster</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/aretha-franklin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Aretha Franklin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/milton-friedman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Milton Friedman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/carlos-fuentes/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Fuentes</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/athol-fugard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Athol Fugard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/peter-gabriel/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peter Gabriel</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/ernest-j-gaines/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernest J. Gaines</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/william-h-gates-iii/"><span class="achiever-list-name">William H. Gates III</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/leymah-gbowee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leymah Gbowee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/frank-gehry/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank O. Gehry</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/murray-gell-mann-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Murray Gell-Mann, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/carlos-ghosn/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Ghosn</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/vince-gill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Vince Gill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/ruth-bader-ginsburg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ruth Bader Ginsburg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/louise-gluck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louise Glück</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/whoopi-goldberg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Whoopi Goldberg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/jane-goodall/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Jane Goodall</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/doris-kearns-goodwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/mikhail-s-gorbachev/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mikhail S. Gorbachev</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/nadine-gordimer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nadine Gordimer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/stephen-jay-gould/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen Jay Gould, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/carol-greider-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carol W. Greider, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-grisham/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Grisham</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/sir-john-gurdon/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir John Gurdon</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/dorothy-hamill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dorothy Hamill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/demis-hassabis-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Demis Hassabis, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/lauryn-hill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lauryn Hill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/sir-edmund-hillary/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Edmund Hillary</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/reid-hoffman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Reid Hoffman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/khaled-hosseini/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Khaled Hosseini, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/ron-howard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Howard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-hume/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Hume</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/louis-ignarro-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louis Ignarro, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/daniel-inouye/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Daniel K. Inouye</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/jeremy-irons/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jeremy Irons</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-irving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Irving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/kazuo-ishiguro/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Kazuo Ishiguro</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/sir-peter-jackson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Peter Jackson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/donald-c-johanson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Donald C. Johanson, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/frank-m-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank M. Johnson, Jr.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/philip-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Philip C. Johnson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/chuck-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Chuck Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-earl-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Earl Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/quincy-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Quincy Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/beverly-joubert/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Beverly Joubert</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/dereck-joubert/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dereck Joubert</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/paul-kagame/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Kagame</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/thomas-keller-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Thomas Keller</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/anthony-m-kennedy/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony M. Kennedy</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/carole-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carole King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/b-b-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">B.B. King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/coretta-scott-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Coretta Scott King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/henry-kissinger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry A. Kissinger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/willem-j-kolff/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willem J. Kolff, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/wendy-kopp/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wendy Kopp</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/henry-r-kravis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry R. Kravis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/nicholas-d-kristof/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nicholas D. Kristof</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/mike-krzyzewski/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mike Krzyzewski</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/ray-kurzwell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ray Kurzweil</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/eric-lander-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Eric S. Lander, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/robert-s-langer-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert S. Langer, Sc.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/richard-leakey/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard E. Leakey</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/leon-lederman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leon Lederman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/robert-lefkowitz-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert J. Lefkowitz, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/congressman-john-r-lewis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Congressman John R. Lewis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/maya-lin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Maya Lin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/george-lucas/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George Lucas</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/paul-b-maccready-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul B. MacCready, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/norman-mailer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Norman Mailer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/peyton-manning/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peyton Manning</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/wynton-marsalis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wynton Marsalis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-c-mather-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John C. Mather, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/johnny-mathis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Johnny Mathis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/ernst-mayr-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/willie-mays/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willie Mays</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/frank-mccourt/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank McCourt</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/david-mccullough/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David McCullough</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/audra-mcdonald/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Audra McDonald</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/admiral-william-h-mcraven/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral William H. McRaven, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/w-s-merwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">W. S. Merwin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/reinhold-messner/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Reinhold Messner</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-a-michener/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James A. Michener</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/marvin-minsky-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Marvin Minsky, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/mario-j-molina-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mario J. Molina, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/n-scott-momaday-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">N. Scott Momaday, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/story-musgrave/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Story Musgrave, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/ralph-nader/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ralph Nader</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/peggy-noonan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peggy Noonan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/jessye-norman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jessye Norman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/tommy-norris/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lt. Thomas R. Norris, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/joyce-carol-oates/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joyce Carol Oates</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/pierre-omidyar/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pierre Omidyar</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/jimmy-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jimmy Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/larry-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/arnold-palmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Arnold Palmer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/leon-panetta/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leon Panetta</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/rosa-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rosa Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/suzan-lori-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzan-Lori Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/linus-pauling/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Linus C. Pauling, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/shimon-peres/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Shimon Peres</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/itzhak-perlman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Itzhak Perlman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/general-david-petraeus/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General David H. Petraeus, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/sidney-poitier/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sidney Poitier</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/general-colin-l-powell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General Colin L. Powell, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/harold-prince/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Harold Prince</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/venki-ramakrishnan-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Venki Ramakrishnan, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/lord-martin-rees/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Martin Rees</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/lloyd-richards/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lloyd Richards</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/sally-ride-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally K. Ride, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/sonny-rollins/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sonny Rollins</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/anthony-romero/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony D. Romero</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-rosenquist/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Rosenquist</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/pete-rozelle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pete Rozelle</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/bill-russell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Bill Russell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/albie-sachs/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Albie Sachs</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/oliver-sacks-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Oliver Sacks, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/jonas-salk-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jonas Salk, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/frederick-sanger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frederick Sanger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/george-b-schaller-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George B. Schaller, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/barry-scheck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Barry Scheck</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/richard-evans-schultes-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard Evans Schultes, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/general-h-norman-schwarzkopf/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/stephen-schwarzman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen A. Schwarzman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/glenn-t-seaborg-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Glenn T. Seaborg, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/neil-sheehan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Neil Sheehan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/admiral-alan-shepard-jr/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral Alan B. Shepard, Jr., USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/ellen-johnson-sirleaf/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ellen Johnson Sirleaf</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/carlos-slim/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Slim Helú</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/frederick-w-smith/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frederick W. Smith</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/stephen-sondheim/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen Sondheim</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/sonia-sotomayor/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sonia Sotomayor</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/wole-soyinka/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wole Soyinka</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/esperanza-spalding/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Esperanza Spalding</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/martha-stewart/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Martha Stewart</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/admiral-james-b-stockdale/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral James B. Stockdale, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/hilary-swank/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Hilary Swank</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/amy-tan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Amy Tan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/dame-kiri-te-kanawa/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Kiri Te Kanawa</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/edward-teller-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Edward Teller, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/twyla-tharp/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Twyla Tharp</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/wayne-thiebaud/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wayne Thiebaud</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/lt-michael-e-thornton-usn/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lt. Michael E. Thornton, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/clyde-tombaugh/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Clyde Tombaugh</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235358/https://achievement.org/achiever/charles-h-townes-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Charles H. 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