Prof Sir Venki steps down

NOBEL Prize winner Professor Sir Venkatraman ‘Venki’ Ramakrishnan (above) has completed his term as president of the Royal Society with a message about being the first India-born scientist to have been appointed to the prestigious role.

In a virtual anniversary day address at the end of his tenure last Monday (1), Prof Ramakrishnan reflected on how his five-year term had been nearly “hijacked” by Brexit and the pandemic.

“The first (Royal Society) fellows to come into contact with India were colonisers like Robert Clive and Warren Hastings, or colonial administrators like Thomas Macaulay and Richard Temple. They certainly did not regard Indians as their equals in any way, and would have been astonished that one day, someone born in India would go on to become a fellow, let alone a president of the Society,” the 68-year-old biologist said in his farewell address.

“When I became your president five years ago... I wanted to see science play a more central role in the national conversation. What I did not foresee was that nearly my entire presidency would largely be hijacked by two events: the Brexit referendum and the Covid pandemic,” he added.

The leading scientist, who also chaired a committee of experts as part of an initiative to analyse worldwide data relating to coronavirus, said, “The speed at which SARS-CoV2 was identified as the cause of Covid-19 and isolated was amazing.

“Its genome was rapidly sequenced, paving the way for tests as well as helping drive progress on treatments. It has enabled the rapid development of vaccines. The pandemic has had a terrible impact on societies but without the tireless efforts of scientists it would have been so much worse.”

However, he noted there were “missteps and mistakes”, adding, “We did not take the virus seriously enough, early enough. We must learn from the mistakes made in this pandemic as well as think about how best to plan for future crises.”

Prof Ramakrishnan, who was born in Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu, was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 2003 and appointed its president in 2015. He will be succeeded by statistician Sir Adrian Smith, the director and chief executive of the Alan Turing Institute for data science and artificial intelligence.