Gene Machine: The Race to Decipher the Secrets of the Ribosome

by Venki Ramakrishnan

WHEN I LEFT INDIA, I had my heart set on becoming a theoretical physicist. I was nineteen years old and had just graduated from Baroda University. It was customary to stay on to get a master’s degree in India before going abroad for a PhD, but I was eager to go to America as soon as I could. To me, it was not only the land of opportunity but also of rational heroes like Richard Feynman, whose famous Lectures on Physics had been part of my undergraduate curriculum. Besides, my parents were already there, as my father was doing a short sabbatical at the University of Illinois in Urbana. Since this was a last-minute decision, I had not taken the GRE exam that is a requirement for American graduate schools, and most universities would not even consider my application. The physics department at the University of Illinois initially accepted me, but when the graduate college found out I was only nineteen, they said that at best I could join as an undergraduate with two years of college credit. No middle-class Indian then could afford the cost of tuition and living in America. In the meantime, my department chairman in Baroda showed me a letter from Ohio University asking him to let prospective graduate students know about its program. I had never heard of Ohio University before but saw that the department had an IBM System/360 computer and a Van de Graaff accelerator and that its faculty had been trained at some of the best universities; that seemed good enough for me. They waive...