I am naturally one of the billion people in India whom Indian-American Venkatraman Ramakrishnan has made proud by winning the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his pioneering work on ribosome, a cellular machine that makes proteins. Born in 1952 in the temple town of Chidambaram in Tamil Nadu, Ramakrishnan shares the Nobel prize with Thomas E Steitz (US) and Ada E Yonath (Israel).

Related Story: 2009 Nobel Prizes for the Sciences

Ribosomes produce proteins, which in turn control the chemistry in all living organisms. The ribosome is found in all living cells, including those of bacteria. Human and bacterial ribosomes are slightly different, making the ribosome a good target for antibiotic therapy that works by blocking the bacterium's ability to make the proteins it needs to function.57-year-old Ramakrishnan is the ninth Indian or of Indian origin to win the prestigious award.

When Rabindranath Tagore and Sir C V Raman won the Nobel prize, India was still a British Colony and thus they were in a sense citizens of the British empire. After independence all those including Mr Ramakrishnan who have won this award are US citizens, with the exception of Mother Teresa (who was born in Skopje -then in Turkey- in 1910 and came to India in 1931 which had since been her home), V S Naipaul (whose parents had migrated to Trinidad and the author was born there) and the Dalai Lama, who has been living in exile in India since 1959.  

The academic environment and total freedom to grow that the US offers are certainly not available in India. Take the success story of Ramakrishnan. He earned his B.Sc. in Physics (1971) from Baroda University in Gujarat and later migrated to the US to continue his studies where he later got settled and attained US citizenship. He earned his Ph.D in Physics from Ohio University in the US and later worked as a graduate student at the University of California from 1976-78. During his stint at the varsity, Ramakrishnan conducted a research with Dr Mauricio Montal, a membrane biochemist and later designed his own 2-year transition from physics to biology. As a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University, he worked on a neutron-scattering map of the small ribosomal subunit of E Coli. He has been studying ribosome structure ever since.

A physicist, transitioning to biology and then winning an award in Chemistry, only the US can offer this opportunity to any one irrespective of nationality, religion, caste or creed.  But for his migration to US, this would not have been possible.

While congratulating Venky, the Tamil Nadu born US citizen, for his achievements, I record my admiration to the US system of open research.