Maheshi Ramasamy, one of the women scientists behind the Oxford vaccine, gave a good reply when a BBC presenter expressed his surprise: “My God, science is cool now!”
Ramasamy, who has been the lead in the adult clinical trials of the vaccine, laughed: “I have always thought science is cool.”
In a way, it is not surprising that Ramasamy, 43, who was born in Sri Lanka and is the daughter of two scientists, took up science as a career.
Her mother Samaranayake Ramasamy and father Ranjan Ramasamy met when they were science students at Cambridge. In time, their daughter read medicine at Christ’s College, Cambridge, and did her DPhil at Wadham College, Oxford.