Ramakrishnan thanks some of his students by showing them on screen in Stockholm

Stockholm, Dec. 8: From his birthplace in Chidambaram in Tamil Nadu 57 years ago to the Aula Magna auditorium at Stockholm University, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan completed quite a journey today when he delivered his Nobel chemistry lecture.

This year, three scientists have shared the prize for chemistry but Ramakrishan was picked ahead of his fellow winners, Thomas Steitz of Yale and Ada Yonath of the Weizmann Institute in Israel, to deliver the opening lecture.

A packed lecture theatre, which included nearly 30 friends and relatives of Venkatraman, witnessed him open his lecture, ‘Decoding the genetic message: the 3D vision’, with the words: “This is the greatest honour a scientist can have.”

Rather than claim, “I did it all by myself”, he showed pictures of all the “post docs” and colleagues who have collaborated with him at the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge and elsewhere.

In the audience were his wife Vera Rosenberry and stepdaughter Tania Kapka. His son, Raman, a physicist-turned-musician, flies in tomorrow for the royal prize-giving-cum-banquet on Thursday.

An Indian lady who patted him encouragingly on the back said later: “I am his sister, Lalita — today he has surpassed even himself. We are all very proud of him.”

Ramakrishnan’s co-winners referred to him affectionately in their lectures as “Venki”.

Ramakrishnan’s wife Vera Rosenberry

Ramakrishnan acknowledged the “hundreds, if not thousands”, of scientists all over the world who had been researching into ribosomes and associated fields.

After the lecture — the laureates received thunderous applause from the audience, many of them students at Stockholm University — Ramakrishnan sat down with The Telegraph and revealed that he would leave shortly for a trip to India. He also admitted he had now acquired a mobile telephone, something he did not possess before.

“My lab gave it to me,” he said by way of an excuse.

He had, however, come to Stockholm without a tie (though he will have to procure a white tie before the King of Sweden gives him his Nobel medal).

He said he had to rewrite the lecture he had planned. “I had misjudged what the nature of the talk exactly should be. I have always read the Nobel lectures that have been published for decades and they are usually very scholarly and very technical but I was told yesterday that the audience would be much broader than that. So, I ended up having to stay up until 2am, essentially rewriting my talk. Apart from being a little rushed at the end, I thought it was okay.”

The audience, judging by the applause, thought it was more than okay.

Had lectures become show biz?

“It can be,” he agreed. “But the best lectures try to give you a feel for how you got into a problem, what were the difficulties, what were the questions and then give you a sense of something was accomplished and what came out of it. That is the model for most Nobel lectures.”

Was it now business as usual for him?

“I hope so,” he said. “For a few months, I really do have to focus on work — there are several manuscripts that need to be written and one of my post docs has been waiting for two or three months for me to actually finish revising her manuscript. It is time now I went back and focused on science.”

As for his own research, “we have a very clear idea of what we want to do in the next few years and it is often difficult to think a few years ahead of time because you just don’t know what the situation will be. You try to plan may be three to five years ahead of time. Two of the antibiotics whose structures we determined (at Cambridge) could prove useful in providing a link that may prove effective against TB.”

His life was returning to normal “but this week here in Stockholm has been surreal — there are so many events one after another and I just do what I am told essentially”, he laughed, a sign he is learning to enjoy the experience.

He is not ready be a “pop star”, though, and felt embarrassed as a consequence of being “singled out both by the President and the Indian High Commission” during Pratibha Patil’s state visit to the UK in October. “Of course, it is an honour to be singled out — but I did not like being almost mobbed (by crowds). They created almost a parallel event. That was a discourtesy to the President.”

Ramakrishnan said: “I am going to India actually a day and a half after I return to Cambridge — I am leaving on the 18th (of December). I am going to spend four days in Mumbai and then heading off to Chennai for a few days and then probably will spend some time in the south.”

He added: “I am giving only two talks — one in Chennai at the University of Madras and one at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore because these are two institutions that appreciated my work long before I got any awards, let alone the Nobel Prize. They appreciated my work for what it is and not because I have been recognised by somebody else. I have gone to India virtually every year for the last few years so this is just a continuation of that.”

He wished to avoid a Nobel circus. “(It’s) hopefully not too different (from past trips). I hope to have meetings with students in my field and talk to them about their work and also talk to colleagues.”