Being elected a fellow of the Royal Society is second only to the Nobel Prize as an honour, and carries great prestige in academic circles. This honour was recently bestowed upon Lalita Ramakrishnan, a microbiologist noted for her work in understanding tuberculosis (TB). She was elected to the Royal Society, headquartered in London, in May this year.
Like its Swedish and Norwegian counterparts, which select the winners of the Nobel Prizes, the Royal Society also has a storied past. It was established in 1660, granted the royal charter in 1662 and is the world’s oldest national science institution. Its presidents have all been towering figures in science – from William Brouncker, a mathematician, to Paul Nurse, a geneticist. Nurse’s tenure at the helm was completed in 2015, and he was succeeded by Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, a Nobel laureate like his predecessor.
Venkatraman, or Venki, as he is known, was elected president of the Royal Society in 2015. Lalita, his sister, was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 2018. This is a problem.
Scientific societies usually follow an unspoken rule, or norm, that no immediate relative of a jury member, a presiding officer or a head of the academy is to be considered for the fellowship coveted prize during their term, while they exercise their powers. If this quasi-rule is broken, it wouldn’t be the same as breaking a law. Instead, it is a matter of avoiding any conflicts of interest, and of preserving the neutrality of such selections in the eyes of the people.
Against this context, it is not clear how Lalita was elected to the society even as her brother was the sitting president. To be sure: there is no doubt that Lalita deserved the distinction. She has made important contributions to understanding why different people are susceptible to TB to different extents, and has explored immunity to the disease using the zebrafish model.
The issue here is one of timing: Lalita’s election could have been postponed to happen after the conclusion of Venki’s term, expected in 2020. But because it happened during his term, it doesn’t look nice. This is something most prestigious societies in the academic world wilfully avoid.
Additionally, Venki’s and Lalita’s high stature in academia is all the more reason for her election to have been postponed.
It is hard to assume that the incumbent president has no say in such matters. Nonetheless, when The Wire reached out to him, Venki said that he had no comment on the matter. He also added that he was including John Skehel, “the biological secretary who oversees elections of fellows in the life sciences”, in our correspondence.
Skehel replied later that Lalita, like all fellows of the society, “was elected on the basis of the excellence of her science. The election process is rigorous and is based on peer reviews by UK and international experts in the appropriate fields of research. Potential conflicts of interest are identified and monitored throughout the process and the final list of candidates is put to the entire fellowship for election.”
A request for comment to Lalita was unanswered at the time of writing this article.
Aswin Sekhar is an Indian astrophysicist in the UK.