Cambridge honours Nobel winner 'Venki' Ramakrishnan

LONDON: The University of Cambridge has conferred the honorary degree of Doctor of Science on Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, a Nobel Prize winner, for his contributions to medical research, including his work into ribosomal structure and function.

Ramakrishnan, who is the president of the Royal Society and shared the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2009 with Thomas A Steitz and Ada Yonath, received the honour at the university’s honorary degree congregation.

The highest accolade the university can bestow, this year’s recipients of the honorary degree included the 99-year-old classicist and epigrapher Joyce Reynolds, believed to be the oldest recipient in the ancient seat of learning’s history.

Other recipients included former Cambridge vice-chancellor Leszek Borysiewicz, physiologist Frances Ashcroft, genome editing pioneer Emmanuelle Charpentier, poet and literary scholar Michael Edwards, historian Robert Evans and historian, social scientist and author of seminal works on US race relations, Ira Katznelson. Honorary degrees have been conferred in Cambridge for the last 500 years.