Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, the Cambridge molecular biologist who won this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry, is frustrated with the deluge of emails clogging his e-mail box, burying his personal and professional communications: “All sorts of people from India have been writing to me, clogging up my e-mail box. It takes me an hour or two to just remove their mails …. Do these people have no consideration? It is okay to take pride in the event, but why bother me.”
Ramakrishnan complained, “There are also people who have never bothered to be in touch with me for decades who suddenly feel the urge to connect. I find this strange.”
Ramakrishnan’s gripes affronted prominent Indian journalist and film producer Pritish Nandy, who Twittered: “Win a Nobel and you think you are God. No one should attempt to access you, not even people who knew you once. Silly n arrogant.… Venkatraman Radhakrishnan may be a Nobel Prize winner but his reaction to Indians congratulating him is disgusting. Have some grace, man.”
The blowback prompted an apology from Ramakrishnan: “I am distressed by the reaction to my comment about being deluged by emails from India, and realize I have inadvertently hurt people, for which I apologize. I hope people realize that I have no personal secretary and use my email mainly for work, so finding important communications became very difficult…. Unlike real celebrities like movie stars or people in sports, we scientists generally lead a quiet life, and are not psychologically equipped to handle publicity. So I found the barrage of emails from people whom I didn’t know or whom I only knew slightly almost 40 years ago (nearly all from Indians) difficult to deal with.… I am not personally that important. If I hadn’t existed, this work would still have been done. It is the work that is important, and that should be what excites people.”
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