P.C. Mahalanobis

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             P.C. Mahalanobis   A well-known Indian statistician and scientist, Mahalanobis is greatly popular for introducing new methods of sampling. His most significant contribution in the field of statistics was the 'Mahalanobis Distance'. Besides, he had also made pioneering studies in the field of anthropometry and had founded the Indian Statistical Institute.  Originally, the family of Mahalanobis belonged to Bikrampur, Bangladesh. As a child. Mahalanobis grew up in an environment surrounded by socially active refoemers and intellectuals. He had his initial education from Brahmo Boys School Calcutta. Further, he enrolled himself into Presidency College and got a BSc degree with specialisation in physics. In 1913, Mahalanobis left for England for ther stodies and came in contact with S. Ramanujan, the famous mathematician from India. After completion of his studies. he returned

Venkataraman Ramakrishnan

Venkataraman Ramakrishnan 

Venkataraman Ramakrishnan was born in Chidambaram, a small town Cuddalore district in Tamil Nadu in 1952 His parents CV. Ramakrishnan and Rajalakshmi were lecturers in biochemistry at Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda, Gujarat. Venky, as he is popularly known, did his schooling from the Convent of Jesus and Mary in Baroda. He migrated to America to do his higher studies in physics, He then changed his field to biology at the University of California. 


He moved to Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK. It was there he cracked the complex functions and structures of ribosomes, which fetched him the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2009, along with Thomas E. Steitz, USA and Ada E. Yonath, Israel. He became the fourth scientist of Indian origin to win a Nobel Prize after Sir C.V. Raman, Har Gobind Khorana and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. 

Venkataraman Ramakrishnan began his career as a Post-Doctoral Fellow with Peter Moore at Yale University, where he worked on ribosomes. After completing this research, he applied to nearly 50 universities in the US for a faculty position. But he was unsuccessful. As a result of this, Venkataraman continued to work on ribosomes from 1983 to 1995 in Brookhaven National Laboratory. In 1995, he got an offer from the University of Utah to work as a professor of biochemistry. He worked there for almost four years and then moved to England where he started working in Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology. Here, he began a detailed research on ribosomes.


In 1999, along with his fellow mates, he published a 55 angstrom resolution structure of 30s subunit of ribosome. In the subsequent year, Venkataraman submitted a complete structure of 30s subunit of ribosome and it created a sensation in the field of structural biology. 

In 2007, he was awarded with the Louis-Jearitet Prize for his contribution to Medicine. In 2008, he was presented with Heatley Medal of British Biochemistry Society. For his contribution to science, he was conferred with India's second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan in 2010.

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