Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Sudden fame is a bad thing indeed - Precisely said sir

Venkatraman Radhakrishnan, who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry this year, is at Chennai and gave a guest lecture for Department of Crystallography, Madras University.

And he has reason to ask this question,

“Last year, the lecture was held in [an auditorium] with a capacity for just 300 people, and half the seats were empty,” said a bemused Dr. Ramakrishnan, facing a jam-packed audience of 3,000 at the university’s Centenary Auditorium. “What has changed? I am still the same person doing the same science. Why are people so impressed when some academy in Sweden gives an award?,” he asked.

But Sir, we Indians never look into the quality of the work what matters to us is fame and television. We will honor the victims of 26 / 11, but cannot give a damn about the deaths of people in Communal clashes / police autocracies, forgot the people who were killed by naxals, people who are dying due to poverty and so on. The reason these things are not shown on TV.

4 comments:

RamNarayanS said...

:-) :-) That is not just true here, it is everywhere. Only that the magnitude is a degree higher in India.

Another excerpt from the article pointed to.

>> Asked how students could aim to emulate him and “win a Nobel for India,” Dr. Ramakrishnan answered emphatically: “That is the wrong question to ask…You can’t go into science thinking of a Nobel Prize. You can only go into science because you’re interested in it.”

How many of us do this, in different walks of life, not just in technology? Very few. Very very few.

Sathish Mayil said...

Yeah, I do agree with you. And the question was something which made me LOL.

PS: Can I know which Ram is this?

RamNarayanS said...

I know neither you nor would you know me. :-) Blogwalked into yours when I came across your comments on Uttara's blog. I comment there at random.

Sathish Mayil said...

Oho, pleased to see somebody blog walking into mine :)