Sir Venkatraman ('Venki') Ramakrishnan
(1952-), Senior Scientist and Group Leader, Structural Studies Division, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge; recipient of the Nobel Prize for ChemistrySitter in 1 portrait
Venkatraman “Venki” Ramakrishnan grew up in India and left at the age of 19 for the United States. After a long career there, he moved in 1999 to the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. He works on the structure and function of the ribosome, an enormous molecular complex that uses genetic information in our DNA to synthesise the proteins they specify. His work also showed how many antibiotics work by blocking bacterial ribosomes, which could help to design better antibiotics. For this work, he shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. From 2015-2020, he was president of the Royal Society. Ramakrishnan is also the author of a popular memoir, Gene Machine, a frank description of the race for the structure of the ribosome and the science and personalities involved.
Sir Venkatraman ('Venki') Ramakrishnan
by Anne-Katrin Purkiss
bromide print, 31 March 2015
NPG x199262
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