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“Nobel” does not always equal “Noble”

The Nobel Prize is awarded for extraordinary achievement, not for special wisdom or emotional maturity. One of this year's three Nobel laureates in chemistry is Venkatraman Ramakrishnan. Ramakrishnan is the seventh Indian born person to win this honor. Although he was born in India and received his early education there, he did his graduate studies and the subsequent research that led to the prize, in the US. The scientist is currently working in Cambridge, UK. Indians are understandably thrilled that a desi born scientist has been awarded the world's most famous prize. Congratulations have been pouring in from all over India, including a message from the country's president.

But instead of being pleased,the neo-Nobelist has complained bitterly about the outpouring of good wishes emanating from the country of his birth. Ramakrishnan is particularly miffed that the valedictory messages have "clogged up" his email account and that people he doesn't ever remember knowing are making up fictitious personal connections with his early life. The scientist is very annoyed that winning the Nobel Prize has opened the door for Indians to claim him as their native son, based just on the "accident of birth."

Venkatraman-Ramakrishnan
NEW DELHI: Nobel laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan has expressed disenchantment with people from India "bothering" him "clogging" up his email box and dubbed as "strange" their sudden urge to reach out to him.

"All sorts of people from India have been writing to me, clogging up my email box. It takes me an hour or two to just remove their mails," he said. He said the deluge of emails had buried important communications from colleagues or from journals concerning papers we have in press.

"Do these people have no consideration? It is OK to take pride in the event, but why bother me?" the 57-year-old Indian-American scientist wondered in an email interview said.

"There are also people who have never bothered to be in touch with me for decades who suddenly feel the urge to connect. I find this strange," said Ramakrishnan, who shared this year's Nobel Prize for Chemistry with two others.

He expressed anguish over "all sorts of lies" published about him in a section of the media that he went to school and pre-Science in Chidambaram, the Tamil Nadu temple town where he was born in 1952.

 "People I don't know, for example a Mr Govindrajan, claim that they were my teachers at Annamalai University which I never attended, since I left Chidambaram at the age of three," Ramakrishnan clarified.

Ramakrishnan said that it was a good thing if his winning the Nobel Prize encouraged people to read about the work, read books and take interest in science.

"But I, personally, am not important. The fact that I am of Indian origin is even less important. We are all human beings, and our nationality is simply an accident of birth," he said.

Ouch! Yeah Venky, pretty pathetic, those hero worshiping Indians. I am not a great fan of chest thumping patriotism and nationalistic pride myself and I admire you for rising above a narrow ethnic identity. But come on, haven't you seen any other group of people seeking allegiances with successful stars? Kenya (sometimes all of Africa) calls President Obama its own. Colin Powell's relatives in Jamaica proudly pointed out his ancestry when he became Secretary of State. And those two were born in the US. Isn't a celebration due when a native son or daughter does well on the world stage? Or is that too gauche a sentiment? Anyway, not to worry. The excitable Indians will soon forget you and your achievement in due time and latch on to some other celebrity. Fame is an ephemeral commodity. Too bad, you could not be gracious enough to enjoy it while it lasts.

A question to the linguists: Is it appropriate to call the good scientist a curmudgeon? Or at least a surl or a churl?  (Narayan indicated that the last two may be acceptable words)   

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12 responses to ““Nobel” does not always equal “Noble””

  1. Joe

    He’s a curmudgeon in my book. But then, my grasp of the OED isn’t as complete as Dean’s, and Narayan seems to know more about the word curmudgeon than I do.

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  2. manoj

    I agree with Ruchira’s analysis. There is another benign side-effect from this in the arousal of national pride. I could have imagined a score of youngsters in Chidambaram and Chennai being enthused by the achievement to study and strive a little more. The same, I suppose, would happen in the case of Obama and Powell.
    I notice that US news organisations are prone to writing “American-born” when it comes to American national pride, but say in the case of Mother Teresa, would invariably write “Albanian born” nun, though the Mother spent most of her life in India and was a naturalised Indian.

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  3. Dean C. Rowan

    Anybody who admits he is not important is either not a curmudgeon or one of the very best sort. Hmmm, maybe I’ll email him to let him know!

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  4. prasad

    I think Hargobind Khorana was also similarly crotchety about his post-Nobel acclaim in India, though in has case there was bitterness about the limited support he’d got from the government during his early days as struggling researcher, before he gave up and came to the west.

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  5. Ruchira

    Yes, I have heard the same thing said about H.S. Khorana. But there was no e-mail in those days so the assault on his patience by well meaning Indians was probably limited.
    As for young (and putatively brilliant) Indian scientists getting a raw deal from the heavies in their own country, it is such a common story that it is almost self-defeating to hold a grudge. Practically all basic scientists born between the 1940s through the ’60s (I don’t know how things are now for the younger gen) will tell you some horror story or the other about trying to do original research in India.
    See the short poem in the comments section of a post from April, 2008. It was written by my husband during his Ph.D. years at the AIIMS. As Sujatha points out correctly in a later comment, it was his frustration showing.

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  6. banerjee

    My take is that Ramakrishnan is not socially savvy enough to understand that saying what he actually thinks may not be the best move in public life. Savvier people in his position would probably act nice in public but delete every e-mail that came their way. Ramakrishnan seems to have attempted to read some of them.

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  7. Ruchira

    You are right, Banerjee. Some of it has to do with Ramakrishnan’s lack of social savvy. He could have kept his irritation to himself, sharing it with others close to him. Publicly, he should have used a smiley face.

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  8. Dean C. Rowan

    Now this is interesting. What in the story evinces lack of social savvy, by which I think Banerjee and Ruchira mean impoliteness or an excessive forthrightness respecting his unpleasant experience of celebrity? I wonder, first of all, how this became news. Did Ramakrishnan hire a press agent to get the word out that he is p.o.’d with all of the attention he’s suddenly attracting? Or did an interviewer ask him for his impressions of his new celebrity? Probably the latter–the story refers to an email interview, no little irony–in which case I see nothing wrong with his frank condemnation of “all sorts of people” who “have no consideration.” He’s absolutely correct, and keeping his gripe under wraps serves nobody. His public venting reminds us that the miraculous technological innovations we have come to take for granted extract real costs. I believe the costs are much higher than we are generally willing to accept.
    Nowhere does he attack an identifiable individual or a particular “sort” of people. He names Mr. Govindrajan, but he does so to defend against serious misrepresentation, and on the basis of this story nobody is going to figure the identity of Mr. G. Let’s imagine that among the gazillions of fan mail messages he’s received there were a few from close family and friends that he welcomed. Perhaps he exercised social savvy by replying gratefully to those and apologizing for brevity in the face of the tidal wave of unsolicited mail. No smiley face required. Have emoticons become a paradigm of social savvy?
    This phenomenon is not exclusive to India. I’m sure American celebrities are often inundated with fan mail. They likely either refuse to reply to it, or hire somebody to do so for them. Representing in public that they want to be left alone would be professionally suicidal, but probably socially constructive. Besides, although Ruchira describes the flood as “an outpouring of good wishes,” the story depicts contacts more “strange.” They are strange, not least because they reflect a widespread misunderstanding by the well-wishers of the tools they use to communicate.

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  9. Ruchira

    Curmudgeons! Curmudgeons!

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  10. narayan

    I have been reading, off and on, two books about S. Chandrasekhar who received a Nobel in 1983 : A. I. Miller’s Empire of the Stars, whose subtitle, “Obsession, Friendship, and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes”, hints at the darker aspects of scholarly life, and K. C. Wali’s Chandra.
    Wali recounts his 1984 conversation with Chandra about his reactions to the Nobel Prize. The three page segment reveals a litany of dissatisfactions that defies precis. Miller’s analysis, possibly drawing on Wali’s personal recollections, is succinct : “The burning desire to have one’s work recognized with a Nobel Prize can have a damaging effect on a scientist’s life”. “Some who have done important work listen for the phone to ring in October, only to wait and wait”, is followed by the retelling of an incident at a celebration of the Dirac-Heisenberg award where “Born’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I should be there, I should be there’, he said.”
    If Ramakrishnan were not so self absorbed he would learn that Chandra was deluged by the same people, “an assistant master of Hindu High School at Triplicane, Madras”, and “a Hindu priest from Pittsburgh calls you and says he wants to perform a puja ceremony for you”. Khorana and Ramakrishnan probably never endured the degree of blatant racism of Chandra’s times, and their recognition was not delayed by fifty years (yes, five decades). All three might feel humbled by the abject experiences of the forgotten Frederick Banting who discovered insulin single handedly, with scant official support, only to have his administrative boss co-opt the Nobel as co-discoverer. And Banting’s misfortunes continued long after his untimely death in WWII, almost till today!

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  11. banerjee

    Narayan,
    Banting is/was hardly forgotten. You must be thinking of Charles Best?

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  12. narayan

    As I understood it, it was Banting who had the idea and Best was the student who assisted him in the refinement stages. The Nobel was jointly awarded to Banting and his boss Macleod, who contributed little to the effort; the incensed Banting split his half of the prize money with Best. People in medical research and endocrinologists may know of Banting but his name is not widely known even among diabetics. I learnt about the story a year into insulin use, thanks to an excellent Canadian TV series that is now unavailable.

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