Gordon Brown honours Nobel winners Amartya Sen, Venkat Ramakrishnan

British winners of the prestigious Nobel Prize, including Indian-origin biologist Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and economist Amartya Sen, were honoured in London by premier Gordon Brown to celebrate their achievements.

Ramakrishnan was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for Chemistry while Sen won the same for welfare Economics in 1998. They and other Nobel Prize winners from Britain were honoured at a dinner reception hosted by Brown and his wife, Sarah Brown, at 10, Downing Street yesterday.

The UK ranks top in Europe in terms of the number of Nobel prizes won, and is second globally only to the US.

The prime minister said, "Britain was where the first novel was written, the theory of gravity was first formulated, and penicillin was first created to save millions of lives.

"All of you, the pride of our country, are heirs of that legacy who have nobly enlarged it. You stand on mountaintops of our time, of human aspiration and achievement," he said.

Other guests at the event included former Northern Ireland politicians John Hume and Lord Trimble, who shared the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize.

Also present were Sir Tim Hunt, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology, Sir Martin Evans, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine 2007, and Sir John E Walker, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1997.

The UK produces 9% of the world's scientific papers and has a citation share of 12 per cent, second only to the US.