Biologist Venki Ramakrishnan lined up for Royal Society

The BBC understands that the next president of the Royal Society is set to be the Nobel-winning Cambridge researcher Prof Venki Ramakrishnan.

Prof Ramakrishnan shared the 2009 chemistry Nobel for discovering the precise structure of ribosomes - the molecular machines that manufacture proteins inside all living cells.

If confirmed in the role, he will succeed Sir Paul Nurse in December.

The society's council is meeting to confirm the appointment.

Prof Nurse took on the role in 2010 and will step down after the customary five-year term.

The position is one of the most important in British science. The Royal Society has existed since 1660 and its president is a key advocate for science in the UK and the world.

An eminent American-British structural biologist, born in India, Prof Ramakrishnan works at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. He is one of 14 Nobel winners from that laboratory.

He has previously said that upon winning the Nobel Prize in 2009, he assumed it was a hoax call. The new appointment should come as less of a surprise, since it is the result of a vote by the society's fellowship - now set to be confirmed by the organisation's council.

Other fellows have greeted the news warmly - though it is widely acknowledged that Prof Nurse has set a strong example for advocacy and will, of course, be a hard act to follow.

The research for which Prof Ramakrishnan shared that the Nobel was commenced in the US, where he has spent much of his working life. He moved to Cambridge in 1999.

His predecessor, the geneticist Prof Nurse, was also a Nobel laureate, as has been the case with many previous society presidents.

More unusual is for two successive presidents to come from the biological sciences; the role has been held by scientists across nearly every discipline - including chemistry, physics, astronomy, mathematics and zoology.

The presidency has never been held by a woman.