my student Venkatraman Ramakrishnan has won the Nobel

"I am extremely happy to hear that my student Venkatraman Ramakrishnan has won the Nobel prize for Chemistry', Prof M S Govindarajan,
who taught him Physics at pre-university level at Annamalai University in Chidambaram where he was born, said on Wednesday.

"I am very happy to hear the news. I am proud of him", Govindarajan, a professor in Annamalai University told PTI from Chidambaram in Tamil Nadu's Cuddalore district.

Govindarajan taught physics to Ramakrishnan in 1968-69. "He (Venkataraman) was one of the few top among the 300 students", he said.

Govindarajan's daughter, Dr G Radhika, an associate Professor at Annamalai University and Ramakrishnan's classmate in PUC, said "I am very happy that I happened to be his classmate. I am sorry that I cannot recollect any thing more as forty years have passed', she told PTI.

Ramakrishnan, a senior scientist at MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge, today shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2009, along with two others.
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