Nobel laureate Venkataraman failed IIT entrance

Bangalore: At a public lecture at the IISc in Bangalore, Venkataraman Ramakrishnan who won the Nobel prize in Chemistry in 2009 recalled that he appeared for the IIT entrance test and in the reputed CMC (Christian Medical College), Vellore but did not get a single seat.

Ramakrishnan also recalled that years later, in 1981, after his post-doctoral, he could not initially find a job even though he had put in 50 applications in different universities (overseas) without success. He remembered his journey from Baroda where he went to school and college before moving to Ohio University for his Ph.D. He shifted to Baroda from Chidambaram in Tamil Nadu when he was three.

"My parents were somewhat old-fashioned; they did not believe in coaching classes (in preparation for entrance test)," Ramakrishnan told a packed J N Tata Auditorium, where many could not even enter because it was crowded. They (his parents) thought coaching classes were "nonsense".

Also, giving an explanation for not qualifying the entrance tests for the medical college, he said that those days, there were only a small number of seats for men.