Venkatraman Ramakrishnan Quotes

Much of my work in biology has been driven by my early training in chemistry. When studying a new chemical compound, the first and most important thing is to determine its detailed molecular structure.

I have lived much of my life among molecules. They are good company.

Life is a relationship among molecules and not a property of any molecule.

The chemistry involved made everything Factory did quite special.

Biochemistry is the science of life. All our life processes - walking, talking, moving, feeding - are essentially chemical reactions. So biochemistry is actually the chemistry of life, and it's supremely interesting.

Supramolecular chemistry, the designed chemistry of the intermolecular bond, is rapidly expanding at the frontiers of molecular science with physical and biological phenomena.

Molecular chemistry, the chemistry of the covalent bond, is concerned with uncovering and mastering the rules that govern the structures, properties and transformations of molecular species.

There is a close analogy between organic chemistry in its relation to biochemistry and pure mathematics in its relation to physics.

As soon as we touch the complex processes that go on in a living thing, be it plant or animal, we are at once forced to use the methods of this science [Chemistry / Physics]. No longer will the microscope, the kymograph, the scalpel avail for the complete solution of the problem…. the investigator must associate himself with those who have labored in fields where molecules and atoms, rather than multicellular tissues or even unicellular organisms, are the units of study.

Biochemical interactions are very interesting to me.

Chemistry happens naturally, and there's not really a lot you can do intentionally to create it.

The problem is how do molecules react. Because if you want to transform a molecule into something useful or something you're interested in, it helps a lot to understand the structure. That means you can explore much more complicated systems, much more complicated reactions.

I believe that the science of chemistry alone almost proves the existence of an intelligent creator.

I am a creature of chemicals.

Every aspect of the world today - even politics and international relations - is affected by chemistry.

Chemistry... is like the maid occupied with daily civilisation; she is busy with fertilisers, medicines, glass, insecticides ... for she dispenses the recipes.

People don't realize that molecules themselves are somewhat hypothetical, and that their interactions are more so, and that the biological reactions are even more so.

It turns out all molecular and biological systems have speeds of the atoms move inside them; the fastest possible speeds are determined by their molecular vibrations, and this speed is about a kilometre per second.

I have always been an avid reader of chemical literature, eager for what is new.

Physiology is the science which treats of the properties of organic bodies, animal and vegetable, of the phenomena they present, and of the laws which govern their actions. Inorganic substances are the objects of other sciences, - physics and chemistry.

You have to look at how chemistry develops.

The chemist, whose science is immediately concerned with the combinations of atoms, has rarely found it necessary to discuss their shapes, and gives them no particular forms in his diagrams. That does not mean that the shapes are unimportant, but rather that the older methods could not define them.

We can track and see the production of single molecules, trace them and see how they assemble into structures.

Living organisms are created by chemistry. We are huge packages of chemicals.

In research, I wanted to establish the medicinal chemistry/bioassay conjugation as an academic pursuit, as exciting to the imagination as astrophysics or molecular biology.