Venki Ramakrishnan

Venki Ramakrishnan, PhD, is a structural biologist and a Nobel Prize laureate. He shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on the structure and function of the ribosome, the cellular machine that creates proteins. Born in India and working in the UK and USA, Ramakrishnan has had a distinguished scientific career, including serving as the President of the Royal Society from 2015 to 2020.\n\nHe is the author of Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality. In this book, he turns his rigorous scientific gaze toward one of biology's greatest mysteries: death. Ramakrishnan explains the biological processes that cause aging and critically investigates the current hype surrounding life-extension technologies. His writing is known for making complex molecular biology accessible and for his skeptical, evidence-based approach to scientific trends.