Professor very happy over ward getting Nobel prize

"I am extremely happy to hear that my student Venkatraman Ramakrishnan has won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry," Professor M S Govindarajan, who taught him Physics at pre-university level at Annamalai University in Chidambaram, said on Wednesday.

"I am very happy to hear the news. I am proud of him", Govindarajan, a professor in Annamalai University, told PTI from Chidambaram in Tamil Nadu's Cuddalore district. Govindarajan taught physics to Ramakrishnan in 1968-69.

"He (Venkataraman) was one of the few toppers among the 300 students," he said.

Govindarajan's daughter, Dr G Radhika, an associate Professor at Annamalai University and Ramakrishnan's classmate in PUC, said, "I am very happy that I happened to be his classmate. I am sorry that I cannot recollect anything more as forty years have passed."

Ramakrishnan, a senior scientist at MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge, today shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2009, along with two others.