“It is not my son, it is a man from Baroda who has won the Nobel.” This is what C V Ramakrishnan said when Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU) chancellor Mrunalinidevi Puar called to congratulate him on the Chemistry nobel for Venkatraman Ramakrishnan who graduated in Physics from Baroda in 1971.

At the MSU, Venki’s father is fondly remembered as the founder of its Biochemistry department. Mother Rajlakshmi too taught in the same department. C V Ramakrishnan, speaking to The Indian Express from Seattle, said: “His grandmother definitely knew that he would do great, because she reasoned his parents were well educated.”

As word spread of the great achievement of the “man from Baroda”, Room No. 45 in the MSU Physics department received a steady stream of visitors. For it was here, on a wooden bench with old inkpots, that Venki attended class.

Prof A C Sharma, head of the Physics department, took visitors on a tour of the department. He even pulled out a paper to show the last lecture that Venki delivered at the MSU. “He was invited by the Biochemistry department for a molecular biology lecture. But he delivered the lecture in Room No. 45 of the Physics department,” he said.

Ramakrishnan said “Venki called us in the morning to inform us about the prize” and joked how, while in Baroda, his son attended the Covent of Jesus and Mary, a school for girls. The family lived in Vadodara from 1955 to 1986. Venki was born in 1952 in Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu.

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