Har Gobind Khorana

Khorana, Har Gobind 

Born Jan 9, 1922, in Raipur, India. American biochemist of Indian descent. Member of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (1966). Foreign member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1971).

Khorana received a degree from Punjab University in 1945 and one from the University of Liverpool in 1948. He worked at the Federal Polytechnical School in Zurich from 1948 to 1950 and at Cambridge University in Great Britain from 1950 to 1952. He was head of the laboratory of organic chemistry at the University of British Columbia in Canada from 1952 to 1960. In 1960 he became one of the directors of the Institute of Enzyme Research at the University of Wisconsin in Madison (USA) and a professor at that university in 1962. Since 1970 he has worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Khorana’s principal works are on the synthesis of nucleotides, coenzymes, and nucleic acids. He has made a great contribution toward interpreting the genetic code; he has synthesized the simplest genes and a 72-member polynucleotide with a succession of mononucleotides that corresponds to alanine transfer RNA. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1968 with R. Holley and M. Nirenberg.

WORKS

Some Recent Developments in the Chemistry of Phosphate Esters of Biological Interest. New York-London, 1961.

A. N. SHAMIN