Competition is good for science, but bad for scientists, Nobel Laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan said, asserting that while competition is intrinsic, the system tends to exacerbate it.
The eminent structural biologist said there were many other ways of looking at the world and urged scientists not to forget the human, emotional and social side of nature.
Ramakrishnan was speaking in a discussion on his new book "Gene Machine and The Culture of Science" at the Jaipur Literature Festival Friday.
"Competition is good for science, but bad for scientists. While competition is intrinsic, the system tends to exacerbate it," he said.
He also emphasised on India's need to "re-think the funding models" while drawing a comparison with South Korea and Israel.
"Change will be a slow process and re-thinking our funding models is necessary... India, for example, only spends 0.7 per cent of its GDP on science, in comparison with countries like South Korea and Israel that spend nearly 3-4 per cent of their GDP," he added.
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The 67-year-old scientist won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Thomas A Steitz and Ada Yonath, for his research in the structure and function of the ribosomes in 2009.
The President of the Royal Society also touched upon other topics like music and art and on the journey of a scientist as a human being in the discussion with Priyamvada Natarajan, professor of Astronomy at Yale University.
Responding to a question on how music impacts ribosomes, Ramakrishnan said, "Music is a little bit of a mystery. There is something deep and fundamental about it that I don't understand, but I am grateful it exists."
"Art and music move us in deep and unpredictable ways. We have much to learn from the humanities and the arts," he said.
"Much of what I have said may perhaps sound a little utilitarian but science and the pursuit of knowledge are also a thing of beauty. Poets and artists have often reflected on the beauty of the night sky but the images of space from the Hubble Telescope speak for themselves," he said.
When a member in the audience asked him a quirky question to name scientists and musicians he would invite to a hypothetical dinner party, Ramakrishnan named Albert Einstein, Linus Pauling, M S Subbalakshmi, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and his son and daughter-in-law, both of whom are professional musicians.
Emphasising on the importance of proteins, he said they were not "simply something that build muscles, but are in fact the elixir of life: we see, breathe and remember because of proteins".
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