Tamil Nadu-born Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, one of the three winners of this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry, on Thursday received the prize at a gala ceremony in Stockholm along with other recipients.
The other Nobel laureates in literature, economics, physics and medicine also received their prizes from Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf at a formal event in Stockholm's Concert Hall. A record five women were awarded the Nobel this year.
Born in 1952 in Chidambaram and a senior scientist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge, Ramakrishnan shared the Nobel prize with Thomas E Steitz (US) and Ada E Yonath (Israel) for their "studies of the structure and function of the ribosome".
"This year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry awards Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A Steitz and Ada E Yonath for having showed what the ribosome looks like and how it functions at atomic level," the Nobel committee had said in its citation.
All three have used a method called X-ray crystallography to map the position for each and every one of the hundreds of thousands of atoms that make up the ribosome, it said.
Ramakrishnan earned his B.Sc. in Physics (1971) from Baroda University and his Ph.D. in Physics (1976) from Ohio University.
He moved into biology at the University of California, San Diego, where he took a year of classes, then conducted research with Dr Mauricio Montal, a membrane biochemist.
"This year's three Laureates have all generated 3D models that show how different antibiotics bind to the ribosome. These models are now used by scientists in order to develop new antibiotics, directly assisting the saving of lives and decreasing humanity's suffering," the citation said.
Romanian-born German writer Herta Mueller won the Nobel Literature Prize for her work inspired by her life under Nicolae Ceausescu's dictatorship in Romania.
Australian-American Elizabeth Blackburn and US researcher Carol Greider shared the Nobel in Medicine with Jack Szostak of the United States for their research in cellular ageing.
Elinor Ostrom of the US won the Economics Prize, becoming the first woman to win a Nobel in the field together with Oliver Williamson, another US national, for their separate research on fighting waste in organisations.
The Nobel in Physics was won by Hong-Kong based scientist Charles Kao, Canadian-US researcher Willard Boyle and George Smith of the US for their work on fibre optics and light sensing that helped unleash the Information Technology revolution.
The Nobel prize consists of a gold medal, a diploma and USD 1.4 million per discipline, to be shared if there is more than one recipient.
Earlier US President Barack Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize at a separate ceremony in Oslo. PTI AM "This year's three Laureates have all generated 3D models that show how different antibiotics bind to the ribosome. These models are now used by scientists in order to develop new antibiotics, directly assisting the saving of lives and decreasing humanity's suffering," the citation said.
Romanian-born German writer Herta Mueller won the Nobel Literature Prize for her work inspired by her life under Nicolae Ceausescu's dictatorship in Romania.
Australian-American Elizabeth Blackburn and US researcher Carol Greider shared the Nobel in Medicine with Jack Szostak of the United States for their research in cellular ageing.
Elinor Ostrom of the US won the Economics Prize, becoming the first woman to win a Nobel in the field together with Oliver Williamson, another US national, for their separate research on fighting waste in organisations.
The Nobel in Physics was won by Hong-Kong based scientist Charles Kao, Canadian-US researcher Willard Boyle and George Smith of the US for their work on fibre optics and light sensing that helped unleash the Information Technology revolution.
The Nobel prize consists of a gold medal, a diploma and USD 1.4 million per discipline, to be shared if there is more than one recipient.
Earlier US President Barack Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize at a separate ceremony in Oslo. PTI
