'Any Ape Can Reach For A Banana, But Only A Human Can Reach For The Stars'

There is nothing strange in a 12-year-old South Indian boy collecting sea shells as his hobby.

But consider a 12-year-old boy collecting sea shells and classifying them taxonomically. Not just that, but when he meets with some problem in identification, he writes to a conchologist at the American Museum of Natural History, who in turn is equally baffled by a species as “very rare” and has not been reported from the geographical zone where the kid lives, and hence “very interesting”. All these happened decades ago when mail meant snail mail and photos had to be developed at studios.

The boy is today DR VILAYANUR SUBRAMANIAN RAMACHANDRAN, known to his colleagues simply as “Rama”. Richard Dawkins famously called him “a latter-day Marco Polo” of neuroscience. Nobel laureate Eric Kandel sees in him “the continuation of a tradition in neurology to giants like Broca and Wernicke, who gave us, from studying clinical material, enormous insights into the functioning of the human mind”.

Swarajya is proud to present an exclusive interview with Dr V.S. Ramachandran, director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego, adjunct professor of biology at the Salk institute, and one of the greatest neuroscientists of our time, yet far from being only a neuroscientist. He speaks to Aravindan Neelakandan about the brain, archeology, the Indian heritage, and Sherlock Holmes. Excerpts:

In your childhood, you were attracted by many disciplines in a romantic sort of way. Archeology to conchology to chemistry. What made you choose neuroscience?