Gene Machine: The Race to Decipher the Secrets of the Ribosome
Venki Ramakrishnan tells the story of his journey from physics student to chemistry Nobel laureate
7 October 2009 didn’t start well for Venki Ramakrishnan. Halfway to his lab at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, his bike got a flat tyre so he had to walk the rest of the way. Already grumpy when he arrived in the office, he then had a joker call him up pretending to have an important call from the Swedish Academy of Science. Only this was no prank, it really was the Nobel committee calling to say he had been awarded the Nobel prize in chemistry for his work on the structure and function of the ribosome.