Vadodara: Nobel laureate Venkatraman
Ramakrishnan has said the "dedicated" professors at the
Maharaja Sayajirao University inspired him during his higher
studies but added that he did not "appreciate them much at that
time" as he should have.
"At that time, I perhaps did not appreciate it as much
as I should have, but the difficult theory Madhuben Shah
taught as part of the optics course is the basis of my work
using X–ray crystallography to determine structures," he said
in his first communication with his alma mater after receiving
the Nobel Prize.
In a letter to head of Physics department, MSU, A C
Sharma the Nobel laureate said, "I am grateful to a number of
people in the Physics department. Dr S K Shah and H S Desai
were instrumental in introducing the Berkeley Physics Course
and the Feynman Lectures to undergraduates. Their dedicated
teaching inspired me and many other students."
Ramakrishnan shared the Nobel prize in Chemistry with
Thomas A Steitz (US) and Ada E Yonath (Israel) for their
"studies of the structure and function of ribosome."
The trio had used X-ray crystallography to map position
for each and every one of the hundreds of thousands of atoms
that make up the ribosome.
Ramakrishnan completed his B.Sc in Physics from MSU in
1971 and moved on to US for further studies. He received the
Nobel prize on December 10 in Stockholm.
The Tamil Nadu born scientist also praised DAE Solid
State Physics Symposium being organised in MSU saying it will
be an effective tool in achieving the objectives of symposium.
PTI
