V Ramakrishnan wins Nobel prize for Chemistry

Tamil Nadu-born Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, a senior scientist at the MRC Laborartory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge, has won the 2009 Nobel Prize for Chemistry along with two others, the Nobel Committee announced on Wednesday.

President Prathiba Devisingh Patil has hailed the achievement of Dr. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan saying that it is a matter of pride for India.

The minister of state for science and technology and earth sciences Prithviraj Chavan has also hailed the achievement.

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

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

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