Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
Ramakrishnan in 2015
Born	Venkatraman Ramakrishnan 1952 (age 64–65) Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu, India
Residence	United Kingdom
Citizenship	United States United Kingdom
Fields	Biochemistry Biophysics
Institutions	Laboratory of Molecular Biology University of Cambridge Oak Ridge National Laboratory Yale University University of Utah Brookhaven National Laboratory
Alma mater	Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda (BSc Physics) University of California, San Diego Ohio University (PhD)
Thesis	The Green Function Theory of the Ferroelectric Phase Transition in Potassium Dihydrogen-Phosphate (1976)
Doctoral advisor	Tomoyasu Tanaka
Known for	Structure and function of the ribosome macromolecular crystallography
Influences	Peter B. Moore Aaron Klug The Feynman Lectures on Physics
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2009) FRS (2003) Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine (2007) Knight Bachelor (2012) Padma Vibhushan (2010)
Spouse	Vera Rosenberry (m. 1975)
Children	1 son, 1 stepdaughter
Website www.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/ramak www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/group-leaders/n-to-s/venki-ramakrishnan

Venkatraman "Venki" Ramakrishnan (born 1952) is an Indian-American-British structural biologist of Indian origin. He is the current President of the Royal Society, having held the position since November 2015. In 2009 he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Thomas A. Steitz and Ada Yonath, "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome".

Since 1999, he has worked as a group leader at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, UK, where he is also the Deputy Director.

Ramakrishnan was born in Chidambaram in Cuddalore district of Tamil Nadu, India to C. V. Ramakrishnan and Rajalakshmi Ramakrishnan in a Tamil family. Both his parents were scientists, and his father was head of department of biochemistry at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. At the time of his birth, Ramakrishnan's father was away from India doing postdoctoral research with David E. Green at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

His mother obtained a PhD in Psychology from McGill University in 1959 which she completed in only 18 months, and was mentored by Donald O. Hebb.Lalita Ramakrishnan, his younger sister, is professor of immunology and infectious diseases at the Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.