Nobel laureate Venkatraman praises alma mater

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 and Ada E Yonath 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 a ribosome.

Ramakrishnan completed his Bachelors in Physics from MSU in 1971 and moved on to US for further studies.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.