THE WORLD PORTAL

HERTA MULLER

Romanian born German writer Herta Mueller is always torturing for her anti-communism writings. Now her efforts are praising, because she gained this year’s ‘Nobel Prize’ for Literature. The Swedish Academy judges praised Muller for her ability to depict the landscape of the dispossessed with the concentration of poetry and the sincerity of prose. By winning this Nobel prize, Muller became the 12th woman to have won this prize since it launched in 1901. She will receive this prize worth 10 million kronor ($1.4 million)on 10th December, 2009. Mullers works always describe the human destruction of the Romanian monocracy and the rootlessness of the political exile.

BIOGRAPHY

Herta Muller was born on 17th August, 1953 in a German speaking village Nitzkydorf in Banat, Romania. To study German and Romanian literature, she left her village and joined in the ‘University of Timisoara’. In the university, she was associated with ‘Aktionsgruppe Banat’, a group of young German speaking writers. After completing her studies, she was worked as a translator in a machine factory until she was dismissed for refusal to cooperate with the secret police. Then she earned income by working as a teacher in kindergarten. During this period, she wrote a collection of short stories titled “Niederungen” and it was published in 1982. In English, it was known as “Lowlands” which was censored by the government.In 1987, she moved to West Germany from Romania due to communist cruelty in Romania. Muller had written almost 20 books and some of them have been translated into many languages. “The Appointment”, “Atemschaukel”, “The Land of Green Plums”, “Oppressive Tango” etc is some of her popular books. Although she left Romania over 20 years ago, she still depicts the themes of oppression, exile and dictatorship of Romania in her novels and poems. She is married to the novelist Richard Wagner and now she lives in Berlin.

AWARDS AND HONORS

Nobel Prize in literature is the highest honor of Muller’s works. In addition, she had gained many awards and honors. She is the winner of ‘Aspekte Literature Prize’, ‘Rauris Literature Prize’, ‘Encouragement Prize’ of the Literature Award of Bremen, ‘Ricarda-Huch Prize of Darmstadt’, ‘Marieluise-Fleißer Prize’ of Ingolstadt, ‘German Language Prize’, ‘Roswitha Medal’ of Knowledge of Bad Gandersheim, ‘Kranichsteiner Literature Prize’, ‘Critical Prize’ for Literature, ‘Kleist Prize’, ‘Aristeion Prize’, ‘Joseph-Breitbach Prize’, ‘Literature Prize’ of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, ‘Berlin Literature Prize’, ‘Wurth Prize’ for European Literature und Walter-Hasenclever Literature Prize etc. She was also nominated for this year’s ‘German Book Prize’ for her novel “Atemschaukel” or “Swinging Breath”.

VENKATRAMAN RAMAKRISHNAN

An Indian-American scientist Venkatraman Ramakrishnan became a proud to the home country by winning the Nobel prize for chemistry for his invention on ribosomes, a cellular machine that makes proteins.  He shares the Nobel prize with Thomas E Steitz (US) and Ada E Yonath (Israel) for their “studies of the structure and function of the ribosomes”. He is the seventh Indian or a person with Indian origin who wins this prestigious award.

BIOGRAPHY

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan was born on 1952 in Chidambaram in Tamil Nadu, India. Now he resides in United States. He completed his Pre- University studies from Annamalai University. He earned B.Sc. in Physics from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, India in 1971. Later he migrated to US and attained US citizenship. He took Ph.D. in Physics from Ohio University in 1976. He then spent a year by taking classes in biology at the University of California. He started out as a theoretical physicist. He conducted a research with Dr Mauricio Montal, a membrane biochemist and later designed his own 2-year transition from physics to biology. With this 5.5 Angstrom-resolution structure, Ramakrishnan’s group identified key portions of the Ribonucleic acid and using previously determined structures, positioned seven of the subunits proteins.  He published more than 95 research papers, the earliest being in 1977. In August 26, 2000 issue of Nature, he and his co-scientists published the structure of the small ribosomal subunit of Thermus thermophilus, a heat-stable bacterium related to one found in the Yellowstone hot springs. In September 2000, issue of Nature, he published two papers. In the first to these, he presented the 3 Angstrom structure of the 30S ribosomal subunit. The second paper reveals the structures of the 30S subunit in complex with three antibiotics that target different regions of the subunit. Later he has done studies that provided structural insights into the mechanism that ensures the fidelity of protein bio synthesis. His laboratory has determined the atomic structure of the whole ribosomes in complex with its tRNA and mRNA ligands. He is also known for his work on histone and chromatin structure. Now he is honored for his work on the determination of the three-dimensional structure of the small ribosomal subunit and its complexes with substrates and antibiotics, which has shed light on the mechanism that ensures the fidelity of protein synthesis, and for his work on the structures of chromatin-related proteins. President Mrs. Pratibha Devisingh Patil congratulated him for winning the Nobel prize. President also expressed the hope that the work will be one day help in bringing better cure for those who suffer from incurable bacterial infection.

AWARDS AND HONORS

Ramakrishnan was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Thomas A. Steitz and Ada Yonath. Ramakrishnan will be awarded the Nobel Prize along with one-third of the total prize money of 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.4 million), in a ceremony in Stockholm on December 10. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, and a member of EMBO and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.As a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University, he worked on a neutron-scattering map of the small ribosomal subunit of E Coli.He was also awarded a Guggenheim fellowship .