' He still funds the education of Baroda girls'.

VENKATRAMAN Ramakrishnan's peers in Baroda are overjoyed at him being announced as one of the co- recipients of this year's Nobel Prize for chemistry. The Indiaborn scientist had earned his B. Sc.

in Physics from Maharaja Sayajirao University ( MSU) in Baroda, Gujarat, in 1971.

" Venki ( as his contemporaries called him) was a few years junior to me," recalled retired nuclear physics professor J. S. Bandukwala, whose was close to the Nobel laureate's family.

" They were a great family with keen interest in science," Bandukwala said. " His father C. V. Ramakrishnan had been instrumental in setting up the biochemistry department at MSU and retired from there in 1985," he said.

Bandukwala also pointed out that the Ramakrishnan family had an abiding interest in music and spirituality as well. " They were very close to the last Shankaracharya of Kanchi and the great classical singer M. S. Subbulakshmi. Venki's son is also into music and performs regularly," he added.

Ramakrishnan later went on to do a PhD in the same subject from Ohio University in 1976 and a graduate course in biology from the University of California, San Diego, in 1978.

" What's most striking about him is that despite being a scientist of such high stature, Venki has no airs about himself and has been very concerned about poor people," Bandukwala said, adding Ramakrishnan had been sending him money regularly to fund the education of some Muslim girls in Baroda.

" It is just not about sending money.

He would also periodically ask about their academic progress, particularly in subjects like mathematics, science and english, which shows the kind of concern he has for the girls," Bandukwala said.

" In fact Venki and his sister Lalita, who, too, is a researcher in medicine, had been looking after the family of an old lady who used to live in university's servant quarters behind JM Mehta Hall and had taken care of them during infancy. They used to enquire about her family after she passed away," he said.

Bandukwala's house was torched by fanatic mobs during the 2002 Gujarat riots. " He was very worried when I got into trouble during the riot days," he added.

The retired professor rued the fact that the MSU had given Ramakrishnan's parents a raw deal. The university had constituted an enquiry against his father and when he retired in 1985, he was not even given a farewell.

" His father was a very trusting man.

People took advantage of him and cheated him," Bandukwala said.

" This had a lasting impact on both Venki and his sister," Bandukwala said. " This is just another example of how shabbily we treat our scientists." Ramakrishnan's father and sister are now settled in Seattle, US. " Now that he has won the Nobel, tomorrow Venki may be given the Bharat Ratna as well, but can anything undo what was meted out to his father?" he asked.

It was a moment of glory for his alma mater. But temple town Chidambaram has only vague memories of one of its greatest sons.

The Nobel Laureate was born here in 1952 and had his early formal education.

He had enrolled in a pre- university course in Chidambaram in 1968 and completed it in the same academic year.

Professor M. Govindarajan, who taught him physics, said, " He was a more- than- average student. But he was not the best in his batch. He used to come second or third. There was a girl, now in Coimbatore, who was the topper." Efforts to trace his relatives or his ancestral home, which had been reportedly disposed off, proved futile.

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