Life Changers - Venki Ramakrishnan

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 7 September 2015

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kevin Fong talks to Venki Ramakrishnan, Professor of structural biology in Cambridge and joint-winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2009. Celebrated for his work on the ribosome, the remarkable molecular machine at the heart of all cell biology, Ramakrishnan was knighted for services to Science in 2012 and later this year, will become the first Indian-born president of the Royal Society, the oldest and most prestigious scientific body in the world. And yet, as Kevin discovers, his education and early academic career was anything but predictable or conventional and included being rejected from both Indian and US Universities multiple times.

Image: presenter Kevin Fong with Venki Ramakrishnan, BBC Copyright

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading from the BBC.
0:03.0	The details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use
0:07.0	go to BBCworldservice.com slash podcasts.
0:11.0	You're with the BBC. broadcasts. exploring some of the scientists who have changed our world.
0:23.0	Today I'm talking to one of the most successful scientists you've likely never heard of.
0:28.0	His discoveries will lead not just to the creation of life-saving drugs,
0:32.0	but could help to explain the creation of life-saving drugs, but could help to explain the creation of life itself.
0:36.0	And he's about to become one of the most prominent and influential scientists in the world,
0:41.0	the president of the Royal Society no less. But his route to success has been
0:45.4	anything but conventional and for most of that time, indeed most of his life
0:49.8	he's felt like something of an outsider.
0:53.0	One of my earliest memories, I think I was only a little over three then,
0:57.0	is standing at a playground and watching these children play
1:01.0	and realizing that I had no idea what they were saying and I felt
1:06.4	yeah definitely I felt like an outsider and of course when you were growing up
1:11.0	there people were very friendly I mean I had lots of
1:14.3	friends, but you always realized that you are not a Gujarati, you are a Tamil. Then I moved to America and then of course I was an Indian then in the US and
1:26.2	you know even after you become a citizen and even though America is the land of immigrants
1:32.4	and the melting pot and so on. You're still often
1:35.4	identified by your ethnicity and in Britain which is more old world ethnicity
1:42.4	becomes even if you don't want it to be, other people just regarded
1:46.2	as part of your identity. Occasionally, you know, I would fret about not belonging, but I have a very
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